Karl A. Wittfogel was a Communist of the anti-Stalinist (Trotskyist)
camp. He joined the German Communist Party in 1920, but later turned against
Communism through Stalin's overthrowing of the Jews who had brought the
Revolution to Russia: stalin.html.

Arthur Koestler was similar: a Communist and Zionist until Stalin dished
out the harsh treatment to Jews, that Jews had meted out to non-Jews during
the "Trotskyist" period: koestler.html.

Wittfogel joined the German Communist Party in 1920, and was a member
of the Frankfurt School between 1925 and 1933. Its other leading members
were Jewish, and Wittfogel fits the pattern of Jewish Bolsheviks who abandoned
ship through Stalin's seizing power. Evidence of Jewish ancestry or identity
has not been presented, but the Christian religion was sometimes a cover
for Jews who had assimilated but retained a Jewish identity. Leo Amery,
author of the Balfour Declaration, is a modern example of a covert Jew:
balfour.html.

Stalin used the same covert methods that Jews did, and his actions were
only clear in hindsight.

He banished Trotsky in 1928. The Moscow Trials of 1936-8 were aimed
at Trotsky's support-base, especially Kamenev and Zinoviev (the three leaders
of the Left Opposition being Jewish): stalin-purges.html.

For Wittfogel as for Arthur Koestler, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was the final
straw. in 1939, he broke with the Communist Party; later, he campaigned
against the Communist regimes.

He gave up on Trotsky too. Wittfogel not only criticizes Stalin, but
also makes direct criticisms of Marx, Lenin & Trotsky.

{quote} Recently, an Italian 'left communist,' Bruno R., who formerly adhered
to the Fourth International, came to the conclusion that 'bureaucratic
collectivism' was about to replace capitalism. (Bruno R. - La bureaucratisme
du monde. Paris, 1939, 350 pp.) The new bureaucracy is a class, its relations
to the toilers is collective exploitation, the proletarians are transformed
into the slaves of totalitarian exploiters.

Bruno R. brackets together planned economy in the U.S.S.R., Fascism,
National Socialism, and Roosevelt's 'New Deal.' ... Like many ultra
lefts, Bruno R. identifies in essence Stalinism with Fascism.
{endquote}

Rizzi's ideas were taken up by James Burnham, another former Trotskyist,
in his book The Managerial Revolution (written in 1940): burnham.html.

George Orwell, another Trotskyist, adopted Burnham's ideas in his book
1984.

None of these authors were aware that the USSR had been set up by atheistic
Jews, and that Stalin had overthrown them: stalin.html.

But, of course, their information came from Trotsky himself.

Trotsky set out his own analysis about the Bureaucratisation of the
Soviet Union in his book The Revolution Betrayed (1937) : trotsky.html.

Trotsky calls Stalin a Bonapartist, likening him to Napoleon I and
Napoleon III. But he also likens him to Hitler, saying that all of
them were defeaters of the democratic forces. Trotsky never admits the
covert Jewish leadership of those "democratic" forces.

He writes, "Stalinism and fascism, in spite of a deep difference
in social foundations, are symmetrical phenomena."

Contrary to Trotsky's position, what Napoleon I, Napoleon II, and Stalin
have in common is that they defeated Jewish and/or Freemasonic revolutionary
movements from within, yet carried the revolution forward; Hitler did the
same from the outside.

Some may object over the Freemasonry claim. But Trotsky himself agreed,
in his autobiography My Life: the Rise and Fall of a Dictator, that
the French Revolution had been launched by Freemasons or Illuminiati. He
studied this topic when in Odessa prison.

Wittfogel went on to blame the Russian civilization for the harshness
of Communism. Never acknowledging that the Bolshevik regime had been
set up by Jews, he went on to link the bureaucratic control in the
USSR with what he saw as similar systems in Ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India,
China, the Islamic world, Mexico and the Andes.

But these were the Ancient Civilizations. In this article I will let
Wittfogel present his case, then go on to argue that his damning of the
Civilizations that are our forbears is derived from the Bible's condemnation
of Egypt, Babylon and Rome.

I then argue that Ancient Greeks, such as Herodotus, respected Egypt
and Babylon, and acknowledged that they derived much of their own civilization
from them. It's only the Biblical view that condemns them all outright
(juat as it erroneously says that the Pyramids were built by slaves - HEBREW
slaves).

Voltaire and other Enlightenment intellectuals paid tribute to Chinese
civilization.

Wittfogel joined forces with the Anglo-American Establishment, the secret
society set up by Cecil Rhodes to dominate the world, via bodies such as
the Round Table and the Council On Foreign Relations: quigley.html.

His work was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Wittfogel's worldview is very much like that of Lionel Curtis, the leading
analyst of the Round Table around the time of World War I. He depicted
world history as a struggle between Freedom (Ancient Athens) and Despotism
(the Persian i.e. Achaemenian Empire), with the British Empire playing
the role of Athens today - despite it being a behemoth swallowing a quarter
of the world and controlling much more besides: curtis1.html.

We all laughted at Yes, Minister (and Yes, Prime Minister);
I myself did not miss an episode. But this was the most powerful propaganda
for Privatisation, cast as humour.

Capitalism, in which the economy is privately owned by wealthy individuals
and corporations, is like Feudalism, a decentralized system in which local
lords dominate, and privately own the land their serfs live on.

In contrast, in the Ancient Civilizations the land was owned publicly
(by the Government), and the economy was a "managed" one rather
than left to "market forces". It was that "managed"
economy which produced the temples of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the
irrigation works ... the things most people admire in those civilizations.

Wittfogel says he got his concept of "managerial society"
from James Burnham. James Burnham was a Trotskyist who became a leading
anti-Communist. His book The Managerial Revolution (1941, 1942)
was one of the influences on George Orwell (also a Trotskyist) in writing
1984.

Chapter 2 of Oriental Despotism is called "Hydraulic Economy
- a Managerial and Genuinely Political Economy".

The Managerial Revolution depicted a convergence between Communism,
National Socialism and New-Deal policies (in the West) towards what he
called "Managerial" society, where the public services manage
the state and the economy. Disparagingly, he branded the bureauracy the
"ruling class" in such managerial economies; a theme taken up
by Djilas, in his book The New Class. For Burnham's writings, see
burnham.html.

Decades later, Thatcherism and Reaganomics (privatization and deregulation)
have got rid of the public-sector Managerialism Burnham wrote about in
The Managerial Revolution, and replaced it with rule by company
boards and anonymous creditors, many based in tax havens, not answerable
to the public in any way. They've lined their own pockets, automated the
farms, factories and offices, thrown the workers to the wind, and immersed
most countries in foreign debt.

Against Wittfogel, I argue that the totalitarianism of the USSR derived
not from Russian tradition - which Alexander Solzhenitsyn showed was far
milder than that of the Bolsheviks - but from Judaism. I draw attention
to the totalitarianism Israel Shahak noted in Judaism. In his book Jewish
History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Pluto
Press, London 1994), Shahak repeatedly says that Judaism has a totalitarian
streak (on pp. 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 102, and 103): shahak1.html.

It was to hide that link, that Wittfogel stygmatized the whole of "Ancient
Civilization".

It's time to re-examine the issues, so as to counter the domination
of the earth by huge companies and banks.

This must begin with a re-examination of the start of the Bolshevik
regime; if, as is clear, it was a Jewish Government (see zioncom.html),
does this mean that socialism must be opposed? I argue "No";
that a new attempt must be made; that, this time, it can't be Jewish-dominated,
but nor can it exclude Jews as Nazism did. My website is dedicated to this
project.

It's a project that must draw on the best minds, that must consider
the writings of the leading thinkers, whether sympathetic to the project
or not.

Is the Asia Model a "Confucial Renaissance", as Reg Little
argues (confucian-renaissance.html)?
Or is it "Oriental Despotism", as Wittfogel argues, and today's
Greens argue?

Joseph Needham protested that the "civilization which Professor
Wittfogel is so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars
into officials." Needham's 1959 review of Wittfogel's 1957 book Oriental
Despotism is presented here in full.

Wittfogel points out that Western Europe, whose agriculture relied on
rainfall, never developed public works like the East, except when Rome
became "Orientalized".

While condemning Wittfogel for hiding the Jewish role in Bolshevism,
and thus distorting his whole argument, one must also acknowledge the brilliance
of his book. It is time to unshackle it from the ideology in which Wittfogel
wrapped it.

Today's Greens are depicting the irrigation works of the ancient civilizations
as a tragic mistake.

My position, as a Taoist, is that the individual needs a social structure
- a family structure and a state structure - to belong to. But these can,
and should, allow the individual quite a lot of freedom, with the proviso
that the structure must be maintained.

This is one of the great intellectual battles of our time. Let it begin
...

(1) Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study
of Total Power, Yale University Press, New Haven 1959. First published
1957.

{p. v} A COMPARATIVE STUDY of total power, when it is based on documentary
evidence for the institutional peculiarities of the East and the West,
requires time, patience, and much friendly help. I am profoundly indebted
to the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the University of Washington
for enabling me to engage in the diverse research that constitutes the
factual basis of the present book. As co-sponsor of the Chinese History
Project, New York, Columbia UnlVersity provided facilities of office and
library. For a number of years the Rockefeller Foundation supported
the over-all project of which this study was an integral part. Grants
given by the American Philosophical Society and the Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research made possible the investigation of special
aspects of Oriental despotism.

An inquiry into the nature of bureaucratic totalitarianism is bound
to encounter serious obstacles. ...

{p. vi} New York, July I955

NOTE TO THIRD PRINTING

KARL A. WITTFOGEL University of Washington, Seattle

The present text is substantially identical with that of the first printing.
However, for purposes of clarification, a few changes have been made, the
most important on pages 20, 194 f., 27, and 320. In response to a number
of inquiries, I have documented my assertion that the Mongols were familiar
with the methods of Orientally despotic, especially Chinese, statecraft
when they established their control over Russia (p. 220).

I have also sought to eliminate occasional inconsistencies in the use
of the term "total" as different from "totalitarian"
power (pp. 360, 366). As in the original text, the designation "total
power" - the broader category - is used for the limited
absolutisms of Europe and Japan, the semi-managerial Oriental despotisms,
and the modern total managerial states. In accordance with distinctions
made on pages 1 l l f., 122 ff., 159 f., 319 f., and 44o, the word "totalitarian"
is employed only for incipient and developed forms of the Communist
and Fascist apparatus states.

{p. 1} INTRODUCTION

WHEN in the 16th and 17th centuries, in consequence of the commercial
and industrial revolution, Europe's trade and power spread to the far corners
of the earth, a number of keen-minded Western travelers and scholars made
an intellectual discovery comparable to the great geographical exploits
of the period. Contemplating the civilizations of the Near East, India,
and China, they found significant in all of them a combination of institutional
features which existed neither in classical antiquity nor in medieval and
modern Europe. The classical economists eventually conceptualized this
discovery by speaking of a specific "Oriental" or "Asiatic"
society.

The common substance in the various Oriental societies appeared most
conspicuously in the despotic strength of their political authority. Of
course, tyrannical governments were not unknown in Europe: the rise of
the capitalist order coincided with the rise of absolutist states But critical
observers saw that Eastern absolutism was definitely more comprehensive
and more oppressive than its Western counterpart. To them "Oriental"
despotism presented the harshest form of total power

Students of government, such as Montesquieu, were primarily concerned
with the distressing personal effects of Oriental despotism, students of
economy vith its managerial and proprietary range The classical economists
particularly were impressed by the large water works maintained for
purposes of irrigation and communication. And they noted that virtually
everywhere inthe Orient the government was the biggest landowner.

These were extraordinary insights. They were, in fact, the starting
point for a systematic and comparative study of total power. But no such
study was undertaken. Why? Viewed alone, the social scientist' withdrawal
from the problem of Oriental despotism is puzzling. But it is readily understandable
when we consider the changes that occurred in the 19th century in the general
circumstances of Western life. Absolutism prevailed in Europe when Bernier
described his experiences in the Near East and Mogul India and when Montesquieu
wrote The Spirit of the Laws. But by the middle of the 19th century
representative governments were established in almost all industrially
advanced countries. It was then that social science turned to what seemed
to be more pressing problems.

{p. 2} FORTUNATE AGE. Fortunate, despite the sufferings that an expanding
industrial order imposed on masses of underprivileged men and women. Appalled
by their lot, John Stuart Mill claimed in 1852 that "the restraints
of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present situation
of the majority of the human race." But he also declared that the
modern property-based system of industry, outgrowing its dismal childhood,
might well satisfy man's needs without grinding him down into "a tame
uniformity of thoughts, feelings, and actions."

Fortunate age. Its ever-critical children could combat the fragmented
despotism of privilege and power, because they did not live under a
system of "general slavery." {footnote a} Indeed they were
so far removed from the image of absolutist power that they felt no urge
to study its substance. Some, such as Max Weber, did examine illuminatingly,
if not too systematically, certain aspects of Oriental statecraft and
bureaucracy. But by and large, what Bury said at the close of the period
of liberalism was true: little effort was made to determine the peculiarities
of absolutism through detailed comparative study.

Fortunate age. Optimistic age. It confidently expected the rising sun
of civilization to dispel the last vestiges of despotism that beclouded
the path of progress. ...

a. Marx (1939: 395) applied this term to Oriental despotism without
realizing that more comprehensive forms of state slavery might emerge under
conditions of industy.

{p. 3} Distinguishing as I do between a farming economy that
involves small-scale irrigation (hydroagriculture) and one that
involves large-scale and government-managed works of irrigation and flood
control (hydraulic agriculture), I came to believe that the designations
"hydraulic Society" and "hydraulic civilization"
express more appropriately than the traditional terms the peculiarities
of the order under discussion. The new nomenclature, which stresses human
action rather than geography, facilitates comparison with "industrial
society" and "feudal society." And it permits us, without
circumstantial reasoning, to include in our investigation the higher
agrarian civilizations of pre-Spanish America as well as certain
hydraulic parallels in East Africa and the Pacific areas, especially in
Hawaii. By underlining the prominent role of the government, the
term "hydraulic," as I define it, draws attention to the
agromanagerial and agrobureaucratic character of these civilizations.

THE present inquiry goes considerably beyond the findings of the early
students of Oriental society. In the following pages I endeavor to describe
systematically man's hydraulic response to arid, semiarid, and particular
humid environments. I also indicate how the major aspects of hydraulic
society interlock in a vigorously functioning institutional going concern.

This going concern constitutes a geo-institutional nexus which resembles
industrial society in that a limited core area decisively affects conditions
in large interstitial and peripheral areas. In many cases these marginal
areas are politically connected with hydraulic core areas; but they also
exist independently. Manifestly, the organizational and acquisitive institutions
of the agrodespotic state can spread without the hydraulic institutions
which, to judge from the available data, account for the genesis of all
historically significant zones of agrarian despotism. An understanding
of the relations between the core and the margin of hydraulic society -
a phemenon barely noted by the pioneer analysts - is crucially important
for an understanding of Western Rome, later Byzantium, Maya civilization,
and post-Mongol (Tsarist) Russia.

In the matter of private property the early institutionalists were satisfied
to indicate that the Oriental state controlled the strategic means of production,
and most importantly the cultivable land. The real situation is much more
complicated and, from the standpoint of societal leadership, much more
disturbing. History shows that in

{p. 4} many hydraulic societies there existed very considerable active
(productive) private property; but it also shows that this development
did not threaten the despotic regimes, since the property holders, as property
holders, were kept disorganized and politically impotent.

Obviously, too much has been said about private property generally and
too little about strong and weak property and about the conditions which
promote these forms. The analysis of the varieties of private property
in hydraulic society determines the limitations of nonbureaucratic (and
of bureaucratic) private property under Oriental despotism. Its results
contradict the belief that practically any form of avowedly benevolent
state planning is preferable to the predominance of private property, a
condition which modern sociological folklore deems most abhorrent.

And then there is the problem of class. Richard Jones and John Stuart
Mill indicated that in Oriental society the officials enjoyed advantages
of income which in the West accrued to the private owners of land and capital.
Jones and Mill expressed a significant truth. But they did so only in passing
and without stating clearly that under agrodespotic conditions the managerial
bureaucracy was the ruling class. They therefore did not challenge
the widely accepted concept of class which takes as its main criterion
diversities in (active) private property.

{But the bureaucracy did not privately own those resources, as
for example Rupert Murdoch privately owns much of the world's media,
and makes or buries politicians. Is Murdoch a despot? Wittfogel restricts
this term to public servants; but who is he serving? The nomenklatura of
the Communist countries could not appropriate wealth for their own purposes
to anywhere near the extent of today's big businessmen, or the managers
they employ.}

The present inquiry analyzes the patterns of class in a society whose
leaders are the holders of despotic state power and not private owners
and entrepreneurs. This procedure, in addition to modifying the notion
of what constitutes a ruling class, leads to a new evaluation of such phenomena
as landlordism, capitalism, gentry, and guild. It explains why, in hydraulic
society, there exists a bureaucratic landlordism, a bureaucratic capitalism,
and a bureaucratic gentry. It explains why in such a society the professional
organizations, although sharing certain features with the guilds of Medieval
Europe, were societally quite unlike them. It also explains why in such
a society supreme autocratic leadership is the rule. While the law of diminishing
administrative returns determines the lower limit of the bureaucratic pyramid,
the cumulative tendency of unchecked power determines the character of
its top. ...

{p. 5} The reader will not be surprised to learn that this theory
has aroused the passionate hostility of the new total managerial
bureaucracy that, in the name of Communism, today controls a large part
of the world's population. The Soviet ideologists, who in 1931 declared
the concept of Oriental society and a "functional" ruling bureaucracy
politically impermissible, no matter what the "pure truth" might
be, cynically admitted that their objections were inspired by political
interests and not by scientific considerations. In 1950 the leaders of
Soviet Oriental studies designated as their most important accomplishment
"the rout of the notorious theory of the 'Asiatic mode of production.'"

The reference to the "Asiatic mode of production" is indicative
of the kinds of difficulties that confront the Communist attack on the
theory of Oriental society. To understand them, it must be remembered that
Marx accepted many values of the Western world, whose modern private-property-based
institutions he wished to see destroyed. In contrast to the Soviet c:onception
of partisanship in art and science, Marx rejected as "shabby"
and "a sin against science" any method that subordinated scientific
objectivity to an outside interest, that of the workers included. And following
Richard Jones and John Stuart Mill, he began, in the early 1850's, to use
the concept of a specific Asiatic or Oriental society. Stressing particularly
the Asiatic system of economy, which he designated as the "Asiatic
mode of production," Marx upheld the "Asiatic" concept until
his death, that is, for the greater part of his adult life. Engels, despite
some temporary inconsistencies, also upheld to the end Marx' version of
the Asiatic concept. Neither Marx nor Engels clearly defined the phenomenon
of a marginal Oriental society; but from 1853 on, they both emphasized
the "semi-Asiatic" quality of Tsarist society and the Orientally
despotic character of its government.

Lenin spoke approvingly of Marx' concept of a specific Asiatic mode
of production, first in 1894 and last in 1914. Following Marx and Engels,
he recognized the significance of "Asiatic" institutions for
Tsarist Russia, whose society he viewed as "semi-Asiatic" and
whose government he considered to be despotic.

I WAS UNAWARE of the political implications of a comparative study of
total power when in, the winter of 1922-23 and under the influence of Max
Weber I began to investigate the peculiarities of hydraulic society and
statecraft. I was unaware of it when, in 1924 and now with reference to
Marx as well as Weber, I pointed to "Asiatic" society as dominated
by a bureaucratically despotic

{p. 6} state. I was unaware of having drawn conclusions from Marx' version
of the Asiatic concept, which Marx himself had avoided, when in 1926 and
employing Marx' own socio-economic criteria, I wrote that Chinese developments
in the second half of the first millennium B.C. made "the administrative
officialdom - headed by the absolutist emperor - the ruling class"
and that this ruling class, in China as in Egypt and India, was a "mighty
hydraulic [Wasserbau] bureaucracy." I elaborated this thesis
in 1926, 1927, 1929, and 1931, impressed by Marx' insistence on an unbiased
pursuit of truth. In 1932, a Soviet critic of my Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft Chinas denounced my belief in the objectivity of science.
It was at this time that the Soviet publishers ceased to print my analyses
of Asiatic society in general and of Chinese society in particular.

In the 1930's I gradually abandoned the hope that in the USSR the
nationalization of all major means of production might initiate
popular control over the government and the rise of a classless society.
Deepened understanding of the character of Soviet society paved
the way to further insights into the structure and ideology of bureaucratic
despotism. Re-examination of the Marxist-Leninist view of Oriental
society made it clear that Marx, far from originating the "Asiatic"
concept, had found it ready-made in the writings of the classical
economists. I further realized that although Marx accepted the classical
view in many important essentials, he failed to draw a conclusion, which
from the standpoint of his own theory seemed irescapable - namely, that
under the conditions of the Asiatic mode of production the agromanagerial
bureaucracy constituted the ruling class.

Lenin's ambivalence toward the "Asiatic system" is perhaps
even more revealing. In 1906-07 Lenin admitted that the next Russian
revolution, instead of initiating a socialist society, might lead
to an

{p. 7} "Asiatic restoration." But when World War I
opened up new possibilities for a revolutionary seizure of power, he completely
dropped the Asiatic concept, which, with oscillations, he had upheld for
twenty years. By discussing Marx' views of the state without reproducing
Marx' ideas of the Asiatic state and the Oriental despotism of Tsarist
Russia, Lenin wrote what probably is the most dishonest book of his political
career: State and Revolution. The gradual rejection of the Asiatic
concept in the USSR, which in 1938 was climaxed by Stalin's re-editing
of Marx' outstanding reference to the Asiatic mode of production, logically
followed Lenin's abandonment of the Asiatic concept on the eve of the Bolshevik
revolution.

THE CAMPAIGN against the Asiatic concept shows the master minds of the
Communist camp unable to bolster their rejection with rational arguments.
This in turn explains the oblique and primarily negative methods with which
the friends of Communist totalitarianism in the non-Communist world oppose
the outlawed concept. To the uninitiated these methods, which use distortion
and de-emphasis rather than open discussion, are confusing. To the initiated
they disclose once more the scientific weakness of the most powerful attack
against the theory of Oriental (hydraulic) society.

{p. 9} The marginally Oriental civilization of Tsarist Russia
was greatly influenced by the West, though Russia did not become a Western
colony or semi-colony. Russia's Westernization radically changed the country's
political and economic climate, and in the spring of 1917 its antitotalitarian
forces had a genuine opportunity to accomplish the anti-Asiatic
social revolution which Marx, in 1853, had envisaged for India. But
in the fall of 1917 these antitotalitarian forces were defeated by the
Bolshevik champions of a new totalitarian order. They were defeated
because they failed to utilize the democratic potential in a historical
situation that was temporarily open. From the standpoint of individual
freedom and social justice, 1917 is probably the most fateful year in modern
history.

{Note Wittfogel's continued allegiance to Marx, while being anti-Communist.
This "Trotskyist" combination is also called Marxist Anti-Communism,
and Richard Kostelanetz identified as dominant in the U.S. from the mid
70s: kostel.html}

The intellectual and political leaders of non-Communist Asia, who profess
to believe in democracy and who in their majority speak deferentially of
Marx, will fulfill their historical responsibility only if they face the
despotic heritage of the Oriental world not less but more clearly than
did Marx. In the light of the Russian experience of 1917 they should be
willing to consider the issue of an "Asiatic restoration" not
only in relation to Russia but also to present-day Asia.

12.

THE MASTER5 of the modern totalitarian superstate build big and integrated
institutions, which, they say, we cannot emulate. And they display big
and integrated ideas, which, they say, we cannot match.

{p. 11} CHAPTER 1 The natural setting of hydraulic society.

a. CHANGING MAN IN CHANGING NATURE

Contrary to the popular belief that nature always remains the same
- a belief that has led to static theories of environmentalism and
to their equally static rejections - nature changes profoundly whenever
man, in response to simple or complex historical causes, profoundly changes
his technical equipment, his social organization, and his world outlook.
Man never stops affecting his natural environment. He constantly transforms
it ...

{a standard Marxist viewpoint}

{p. 22} THE CHARACTERISTICS of hydraulic economy are many, but three
are paramount. Hydraulic agriculture involves a specific type of division
of labor. It intensifies cultivation. And it necessitates cooperation on
a large scale. The third characteristic has been described by a number
of students of Oriental farming. The second has been frequently noted,
but rarely analyzed. The first has been given practically no attention.
This neglect is particularly unfortunate, since the hydraulic patterns
of organization and operation have decisively affected the managerial role
of the hydraulic state.

Economists generally consider the division of labor and cooperation
key prerequisites of modern industry, but they find them almost completely
lacking in farming. Their claim refiects the conditions of Western rainfall
agriculture. For this type of agriculture it is indeed by and large correct.

However, the economists do not as a rule so limit themselves. Speaking
of agriculture without any geographical or institutional qualification,
they give the impression that their thesis, being universally valid, applies
to hydraulic as well as to hydroagriculture and rainfall farming. Comparative
examination of the facts quickly discloses the fallacy of this contention.

WHAT is true for modern industry - that production proper depends on
a variety of preparatory and protective operations - has been true for
hydraulic agriculture since its beginnings. The peculiarity of the preparatory
and protective hydraulic operations is an essential aspect of the peculiarity
of hydraulic agriculture.

a. Large-scale Preparatory Operations (Purpose: Irrigation)

THE combined agricultural activities of an irrigation farmer
are comparable to the combined agricultural activities of a rainfall farmer.
But the operations of the former include types of labor (on-the-spot
ditching, damming, and watering) that are absent in the operations
of the latter. The magnitude of this special type of labor can be judged
from the fact that in a Chinese village a peasant may spend from 20 to
over 50 per cent of his work time irrigating, and that in many Indian villages
irrigation is the most time-consuming single item in the farmer's budget.

Hydroagriculture (small-scale irrigation farming) involves a high intensity
of cultivation on irrigated fields - and often also on nonirrigated fields.
But it does not involve a division of labor on a communal, territorial,
or national level. Such a work pattern occurs only when large quantities
of water have to be manipulated. Whereever, in pre-industrial civilizations,
man gathered, stored, and conducted water on a large scale, we find the
conspicuous division between preparatory (feeding) and ultimate labor characteristic
of all hydraulic agriculture.

b. Large-scale Protective Operations (Purpose: Flood Control)

BUT the fight against the disastrous consequences of too little water
may involve a fight against the disastrous consequences of too much water.
The potentially most rewarding areas of hydraulic farming

{p. 24} are arid and semi-arid plains and humid regions suitable
for aquatic crops, such as rice, that are sufficiently low-lying to
permit watering from nearby rivers. These rivers usually have their
sources in remote mountains, and they rise substantially as the summer
sun melts part of the snow accumulated there.

Upstream developments of this kind cause annual inundations in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Turkestan, India, China, and in the Andean and Mexican
zones of America. In semi-arid areas on-the-spot rains create additional
dangers when they are overconcentrated (convectional) or irregular. This
condition prevails in North China, northern Mesopotamia (Assyria), and
the Mexican lake region. Thus a hydraulic community that resorts to preparatory
labor to safeguard the productive use of water may also have to resort
to protective labor to safeguard its crops from periodic and excessive
inundations.

When, in protohistorical times, the Chinese began to cultivate the great
plains of North China, they quickly recognized that the centers of greatest
potential fertility were also the centers of greatest potential destruction.
To quote John Lossing Buck: "Geologically speaking, man has settled
these plains thousands of years before they were ready for occupation.
..." The Chinese built huge embankments which, although unable to
remove entirely the risk inhering in the ambivalent situation, matched
and even surpassed in magnitude the area's preparatory (feeding) works.

In India enormous problems of flood control are posed by the
Indus River and, in a particularly one-sided way, by the Ganges and Brahmaputra
Rivers, which in Bengal create optimal conditions for the cultivation of
rice and maximal dangers from floods. By 1900 Bengal boasted ninety-seven
miles of larger irrigation canals and 1,298 miles of embankments.

In ancient Mesopotamia even watchful rulers could not completely prevent
the inundations from damaging the densely settled plains. In Turkestan
excessive floods periodically threatened the Zarafshan River Valley. In
Upper Egypt the Nile, in very high flood, rises one meter above the level
of the settled countryside, in Middle Egypt two meters, and in the Delta
area up to three and a half meters. The inhabitants of the lake area
of Mexico could benefit from its fertility only if they accepted the periodic
overflow of its short, irregular, narrow streams, which they sought to
control through a variety of protective works. Thus in virtually all major
hydraulic civilizations, preparatory (feeding) works for the purpose of
irrigation are supplemented by and interlocked with protective works for
the purpose of flood control.

{p. 25} 2. COOPERATION

A STUDY of the hydraulic patterns of China (especially North China),
India, Turkestan, Mesopotamia (especially Assyria), Egypt, or Mesomerica
(especially the Mexican lake region) must therefore consider both forms
of agrohydraulic activities. Only by proceeding in such a way can we hope
to determine realistically the dimension and character of their organizational
key device: cooperation.

a. Dimension

WHEN a hydraulic society covers only a single locality, all adult
males may be assigned to one or a few communal work teams. Varying
needs and circumstances modify the size of the mobilized labor force. In
hydraulic countries having several independent sources of water supply,
the task of controlling the moisture is performed by a number of separated
work teams.

Among the Suk of Northeastern Africa, "every male must assist in
making the ditches." In almost all Pueblos "irrigation or cleaning
a spring is work for all." Among the Chagga, the maintenance of a
relatively elaborate irrigation system is assured by "the participation
of the entire people." In Bali the peasants are obliged to render
labor service for the hydraulic regional unit, the subak, to which they
belong. The masters of the Sumerian temple economy expected every
adult male within their jurisdiction "to participate in the
digging and cleaning of the canals." Most inscriptions of Pharaonic
Egypt take this work pattern for granted. Only occasionally does a
text specify the character of the universally demanded activities, among
which lifting and digging are outstanding.

In Imperial China every commoner family was expected on demand to
provide labor for hydraulic and other public services. The political
and legal writings of India indicate a similar claim on corviable
labor. The laws of Inca Peru obliged all able-bodied men to render
corvee service. In ancient Mexico both commoner and Upper-class
adolescents were instructed in the techniques of digging and damming.
At times the masters of this hydraulic area levied the manpower of several
territorial states for their gigantic hydraulic enterprises.

In 19th-century Egypt "the whole corviable population" worked
in four huge shifts on Mehmed Ali's hydraulic installations. Each group
labored on the canals for forty-five days until, after 180 days, the job
was completed. From 1881 on, at a time of decay and disintegration the
whole of the corvee fell on the poorest classes," the smaller number
being compensated for by an increase in the

ORDERLY cooperation involves planned integration. Such integration is
especially necessary when the objectives are elaborate and the cooperating
teams large.

Above the tribal level, hydraulic activities are usually comprehensive.
Most writers who mention the cooperative aspect of hydraulic agriculture
think in the main of digging, dredging, and damming; and the organizational
tasks involved in these labors is certainly considerable. But the planners
of a major hydraulic enterprise are confronted with problems of a much
more complex kind. How many persons are needed? And where can such persons
be found? On the basis of previously made registers, the planners must
determine the quota and criteria of selection. Notification follows
selection, and mobilization notification. The assembled groups frequently
proceed in quasimilitary columns. Having reached their destination, the
buck privates of the hydraulic army must be distributed in proper numbers
and according to whatever division of operations (spading, carrying of
mud, etc.) is customary. If raw materials such as straw, fagots, lumber,
or stone have to be procured, auxiliary operations are organized; and
if the work teams - in toto or in part - must be provided with
food and drink, still other ways of appropriation, transport, and distribution
have to be developed. Even in its simplest form, agrohydraulic operations
necessitate substantial integrative action. In their more elaborate variations,
they involve extensive and complex organizational planning.

c. Leadership

ALL TEAMWORK requires team leaders; and the work of large integrated
teams requires on-the-spot leaders and disciplinarians as well as
over-all organizers and planners. The great enterprises of hydraulic
agriculture involve both types of direction. The foreman usually performs
no menial work at all; and except for a few engineering specialists the
sergeants and officers of the labor force are essentially organizers.

To be sure, the physical element - including threats of punishment and
actual coercion - is never absent. But here, if anyvhere, recorded experience
and calculated foresight are crucial. It is the circumspection, resourcefulness,
and integrative skill of the supreme

{p. 27} leader and his aides which play the decisive role
in initiating, accomplishing and perpetuating the major works
of hydraulic economy.

d. Hydraulic Leadership - Political Leadership

THE effective management of these works involves an organizational web
which covers either the whole, or at least the dynamic core, of the country's
population. In consequence, those who control this network are uniquely
prepared to wield supreme political power.

From the standpoint of the historical effect, it makes no difference
whether the heads of a hydraulic government were originally peace chiefs,
war leaders, priests, priest-chiefs, or hydraulic officials sans phrase.
Among the Chagga, the hydraulic corvee is called into action by the same
horn that traditionally rallied the tribesmen for war. Among the Pueblo
Indians the war chiefs (or priests), although subordinated to the cacique
(the supreme chief), direct and supervise the communal activities. The
early hydraulic city states of Mesopotamia seem to have been for the most
part ruled by priest-kings. In China the legendary trail blazer of
governmental water control, the Great Yu, is said to have risen from the
rank of a supreme hydraulic functionary to that of king, becoming, according
to protohistorical records, the founder of the first hereditary dynasty,
Hsia.

No matter whether traditionally nonhydraulic leaders initiated or seized
the incipient hydraulic "apparatus," or whether the masters of
this apparatus became the motive force behind all important public functions,
there can be no doubt that in all these cases the resulting regime was
decisively shaped by the leadership and social control required by hydraulic
agriculture.

B. HEAVY WATER WORKS AND HEAVY INDUSTRY

WITH regard to operational form, hydraulic agriculture exhibits important
similarities to heavy industry. Both types of economic activities are
preparatory to the ultimate processes of production. Both

{p. 28} provide the workers with essential material for these ultimate
processes. And both tend to be comprehensive, "heavy." For these
reasons the large enterprises of hydraulic agriculture may be designated
as "heavy water works."

But the dissimilarities are as illuminating as the similarities. The
heavy water works of hydraulic agriculture and the heavy industry of modern
economy are distinguished by a number of basic differences, which, properly
defined, may aid us in more clearly recognizing the peculiarities of hydraulic
society.

Heavy water works feed the ultimate agrarian producer one crucial auxiliary
material: water; heavy industry provides auxiliary and raw materials of
various kinds, including tools for finishing and heavy industry. ...

The character of the labor force varies with these spatial and operational
differences. Heavy water works are best served by a widely distributed
personnel, whereas heavy industry requires the workers to reside near the
locally restricted "big" enterprises which employ them. The hydraulic
demand is satisfied by adult peasant males, who continue to reside in their
repective villages; whereas the industrial demand is satisfied by a geographically
concentrated labor force.

The bulk of the hydraulic workers are expected to remain peasants,
and in most cases they are mobilized for a relatively short period only
- at best for a few days, at worst for any time that will not destroy their
agricultural usefulness. Thus division of agrohydraulic labor is not accompanied
by a corresponding division of laborers.

The contrast to the labor policy of heavy industry is manifest. Different
from heavy water works, which may be created and maintained during a fraction
of the year, heavy industry operates most effectively when it operates
continuously. The industrial employers prefer to occupy their personnel
throughout the year; and with the growth of the industrial system full-time
labor became the rule. Thus division of industrial labor moves toward a
more or less complete division of laborers.

The two sectors are also differently administered. In the main,

{p. 29} modern heavy industry is directed by private owners or managers.
The heavy water works of hydraulic agriculture are directed essentially
by the government. The government also engages in certain other
large enterprises, which, in varying combinations, supplement the agrohydraulic
economy proper.

C. CALENDAR MAKING AND ASTRONOMY - IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS OF THE HYDRAULIC
REGIME

AMONG the intellectual functions fulfilled by the leaders of agrohydraulic
activities, some are only indirectly connected with the organization of
men and material; but the relation is highly significant nevertheless.
Time keeping and calendar making are essential for the success of all
hydraulic economies; and under special conditions special operations
of measuring and calculating may be urgently needed. The way in which
these tasks are executed affect both the political and the cultural development
of hydraulic society.

To be sure, man is deeply concerned about the swing of the seasons under
all forms of extractive economy and throughout the agrarian world. But
in most cases he is content to determine in a general way wllen spring
or summer begin, when cold will set in, when rain or snow will fall. In
hydraulic civilizations such general knowledge is insufficient. In areas
of full aridity it is crucial to be prepared for the rise of the rivers
whose overfiow, properly handled, brings fertility and life and whose unchecked
waters leave death and devastation in their wake. The dikes have to
be repaired in the proper season so that they will hold in times of
inundation; and the canals have to be cleaned so that the moisture
will be satisfactorily distributed. In semi-arid areas receiving a limited
or uneven rainfall an accurate calendar is similarly important. Only when
the embankments canals, and reservoirs are ready and in good condition
can the scanty precipitation be fully utilized.

The need for reallocating the periodically flooded fields and determining
the dimension and bulk of hydraulic and other structures provide continual
stimulation for developments in geometry and arithmetic. Herodotus ascribes
the beginnings of geometry in Egypt to the need for annually remeasuring
the inundated land.

No matter whether the earliest scientific steps in this direction were
made in the Nile Valley or in Mesopotamia, the basic correlation is eminently
plausible. Obviously the pioneers and masters of hydraulic Civilization
were singularly well equipped to lay the foundations for to major
and interrelated sciences: astronomy and mathematics.

As a rule, the operations of time keeping and scientific measuring

{p. 30} and counting were performed by official dignitaries or by priestly
(or secular) specialists attached to the hydraulic regime. Wrapped in a
cloak of magic and astrology and hedged with profound secrecy, these mathematical
and astronomical operations became the means both for improving hydraulic
production and bulwarkin the superior power of the hydraulic leaders.

D. FURTHER CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES CUSTOMARY IN HYDRAULIC SOCIETIES

THE masters of the hydraulic state did not confine their activities
to matters immediately connected with agriculture. The methods of cooperation
which were so effective in the sphere of crop-raising were easily applied
to a variety of other large tasks.

Certain types of works are likely to precede others. Generally speaking,
the irrigation canal is older than the navigation canal; and hydraulic
digging and damming occurred prior to the building of highways. But often
derivative steps were taken before the original aclivities had progressed
far, and different regional conditions favored different evolutionary sequences.
Thus the divergencies of interaction and growth are great. They include
many constructional activities above and beyond the sphere of hydraulic
agriculture.

1. NONAGRARIAN HYDRAULIC WORKS

a. Aqueducts and Reservoirs Providing Drinking Water

A COMMONWEALTH able to transfer water for purposes of irrigation readily
applies its hydraulic know-how to the providing of drinking water.
The need for such action was slight in the greater part of Medieval Europe,
where the annual precipitation furnished sufficient ground water for the
w ells on which most towns depended for their water supply.

Even in the hydraulic world, drinking water is not necessarily an issue.
Wherever rivers, streams, or springs carry enough moisture

{p. 31} to satisfy the drinking needs of the population throughout the
year, no major problem arises. The inhabitants of the Nile and Ganges Valleys
and of many similar areas did not have to construct elaborate aqueducts
for this purpose.

The irregular flow of rivers or streams or the relatively easy access
to fresh and clear mountain water has stimulated in many hydraulic landscapes
the construction of comprehensive installations for the storage and distribution
of drinking water. In America great aqueducts were built by the hydraulic
civilizations of the Andean zone and Meso-America. The many reservoirs
(tanks) of Southern India frequently serve several uses; but near the large
residential centers the providing of drinking water is usually paramount.
In certain areas of the Near East, such as Syria and Assyria, brilliantly
designed aqueducts have satisfied the water needs of many famous cities,
Tyre, Antioch, and Nineveh among them. In the Western world of rainfall
agriculture, aqueducts were built primarily by such Mediterranean
peoples as the Greeks and the Romans, who since the dawn
of history maintained contact with - and learned from - the technically
advanced countries of Western Asia and North Africa. No doubt the Greeks
and Romans would have been able to solve their drinking-water problem without
inspiration from the outside; but the form of their answer strongly suggests
the influence of Oriental engineering.

b. Navigation Canals

AMONG the great agrarian conformations of history, only hydraulic society
has constructed navigation canals of any major size. The seafaring Greeks,
making the Mediterranean their highway, avoided an issue which the ancient
city states were poorly equipped to handle. The not-too-numerous Roman
canals were apparently all dug at a time when the growing
Orientalization of the governmental apparatus stimulated, among other
things, a growing interest in all kinds of public works.

The rainfall farmers of Medieval Europe, like their counterparts elsewhere,
shunned rather than sought the marshy river lowlands. And their feudal
masters paid little attention to the condition of the watercourses for
which they had no use. Still less did they feel obliged to construct additional
and artificial rivers - canals. Few if any important canals were built
during the Middle Ages, and medieval trade and transport were seriously
handicapped by the state of the navigable rivers.

It was in connection with the rise of a governmentally encouraged

{p. 32} commercial and industrial capitalism that the West began to
build canals on a conspicuous scale. The "pioneer of the canals of
modern Europe," the French Canal du Midi, was completed only in the
second half of the 17th century, in 1681, that is, little more than a century
before the end of the absolutist regime. And in the classical country of
inland navigation, England, "little ... was done in making canals
... until the middle of the eighteenth century" - that is, until a
time well after the close of England's absolutist period and immediately
prior to the beginning of the machine age.

As stated above, the members of a hydraulic commonwealth felt quite
differently about the management of natural and artificial watercourses.
They approached the fertility-bearing rivers as closely as possible, and
in doing so they had to find ways of draining the lowland marshes and strengthening
and reshaping the river banks. Naturally the question of inland navigation
did not arise everywhere. Existing rivers and streams might be suitable
for irrigation, but not for shipping (Pueblos, Chagga, Highland Peru);
or the ocean might prove an ideal means of transportation (Hawaii, Coastal
Peru). In certain localities inland navigation was satisfactorily served
by man-managed rivers (Egypt, India) and lakes (Mexico) plus
whatever irrigation canals were large enough to accommodate boats
(Mesopotamia).

But when supplementary watercourses were not only possible but desirable,
the organizers of agrohydraulic works had little difficulty in utilizing
their cooperative "apparatus" to make them available. The new
canals might be only minor additions to the existing watercourses. The
ancient Egyptians constructed canals in order to circumnavigate impassable
cataracts, and they temporarily connected the Nile and the Red Sea;
but these enterprises had little effect on the over-all pattern of the
country's hydraulic economy. In other instances, navigation canals assumed
great importance. They satisfied the needs of the masters of the hydralllic
state: the transfer of parts of the agrarian surplus to the administrative
centers and the transport of messengers and troops.

In Thailand (Siam) the different hydraulic tasks overlapped. In addition
to the various types of productive and protective hydraulic installations,
the government constructed in the centers of rice production and state
power a number of canals, wllich essentially served as "waterways,"
that is, as a means for transporting the rice surplus to the capital.

The corresponding development in China is particularly well documented.
In the large plains of North China the beginnings of navigation canals
go back to the days of the territorial states - that

{p. 33} is, to the period prior to 221 B.C., when the various regional
governments were still administered by officials who were given office
lands in payment for their services. The difference between the state-centered
system of land grants as it prevailed in early China and
the knighthood feudalism of Medieval Europe is spectacularly demonstrated
by the almost complete absence of public works in feudal Europe
and the enormous development of such works - hydraulic and otherwise
- in the territorial states of China.

The geographical and administrative unification of China vhich vastly
increased the political need for navigation canals also increased the state's
organizational power to build them. The first centuries of the empire saw
a great advance not only in the construction of irrigation canals, reservoirs,
and protective river dikes but also in the digging of long canals for administrative
and fiscal purposes.

When, after several centuries of political fragmentation, the Sui rulers
at the end of the 6th century again unified "all-under-heaven,"
they bulwarked the new political structure by creating out of earlier and
substantial beginnings the gigantic Imperial Canal, significantly known
in China as Yun Ho, "the Transport Canal." This canal extends
today for about 800 miles, its length equaling the distance from the American-Canadian
Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico or

{p. 34} - in European terms - the distance from Berlin to Bordeaux or
from Hamburg to Rome. For labor on part of this gigantic water work the
Sui government mobilized in the regions north of the Yellow River alone
"more than a million of men and women," that is, almost one-half
of the total population which England is said to have had from the 14th
to the lfith century.

The gigantic effort involved in banking the rivers and building the
canals of China is indicated by the American agronomist, F. H. King, who
conservatively estimates the combined lengths of the man-managed watercourses
of China, Korea, and Japan at some 200,000 miles. "Forty canals across
the United States from east to west and sixty from north to south would
not equal in number of miles those in these three countries today. Indeed,
it is probable that this estimate is not too large for China alone."

2. LARGE NONHYDRAULIC CONSTRUCTIONS

a. Huge Defense Structures

THE need for comprehensive works of defense arises almost as soon as
hydraulic agriculture is practiced. Contrary to the rainfall farmer, who
may shift his fields with relative ease, the irrigation farmer finds himself
depending on an unmovable, if highly rewarding, source of fertility. In
the early days of hydraulic cultivation reliance on a fixed system of water
supply must in many cases have driven the agrarian community to build strong
defenses around its homes and fields.

For this purpose hydraulic agriculture proved suggestive in two ways:
it taught man how to handle all kinds of building materials, earth, stone,
timber, etc., and it trained him to manipulate these materials in an organized
way. The builders of canals and dams easily became the builders of trenches,
towers, palisades, and extended defense walls.

In this, as in all corresponding cases, the character and magnitude
of the operations ere determined by internal and external circumstances.
Surrounded by aggressive neighbors, the Pueblo Indians ingeniously utilized
vhatever building material was at hand to protect their settlements, which
rarely comprised more than a few hundred inhabitants. The fortress-like
quality of their villages is manifest to the present-day anthropologist;
it struck the Spanish

{p. 35} conquistadores who were forced at times to besiege a
single settlement for days and weeks before they could take it. Rigid cooperation
assured security of residence, just as it assured success in farming. An
early observer stresses this aspect of Pueblo life: "They all work
together to build the villages."

{p. 36} In pre-Columbian Mexico the absence of suitable labor animals
placed a limitation on transport, and while this restricted siege craft,
it did not preclude the struggle for or the defense of the cities. In emergencies
many government-built hydraulic works in the main lake area fulfilled military
functions, just as the monster palaces and temples served as bastions against
an invading enemy. Recent research dravs attention to various types of
Mexican forts and defense walls. Because of their size and importance,
they may safely be adjudged as state-directed enterprises. The colossal
fortresses and walls of pre-Inca Peru, which astonished early and recent
observers, are known to have been built at the order of the government
and by "incredibly" large teams of corvee laborers.

Many texts and pictorial representations have portrayed the walls,
gates, and towers of ancient Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Syria.
The Arthashastra indicates the systematic manner in which the rulers of
the first great Indian empire treated problems of fortification and defense.
At the dawn of Chinese history new capitals were created at the ruler's
command, and during the last centuries of the Chou period the territorial
states used their corviable manpower to wall entire frontier regions, not
only against the tribal barbarians but also against each other. In the
3d century B.C. the unifier of

{p. 37} China, Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, linked together and elaborated older
territorial structures to form the longest unbroken defense installation
ever made by man. The periodic reconstruction of the Chinese Great Wall
expresses the continued effectiveness of hydraulic economy and government-directed
mass labor.

b. Roads

THE existence of government-made highways is suggested for the Babylonian
period; it is documented for Assyria. And the relationship between
these early constructions and the roads of Persia, the Hellenistic states,
and Rome seems 'beyond doubt." The great Persian "royal road"
deeply impressed the contemporary Greeks; it served as a model for
the Hellenistic rulers, whose efforts in turn inspired the official
road builders of the Roman empire. According to Mez, the Arabs inherited
"the type of 'governmental road,' like its name, from the Persian
'Royal Road.'" Beyond this, hovever, they showed little interest in
maintaining good roads, probably because they continued to rely in the
main on camel caravans for purposes of transport. The later Muslim regimes
of the Near East used highways, but they never restored them to the state
of technical perfection which characterized the pre-Arab period.

Roads were a serious concern of India's vigorous Maurya kings.
A "royal road" of l0,000 stadia, which is said to
have led from the capital to the northwestern border, had a system of
marking distances which, in a modified form, was again employed by
the Mogul emperors. In Southern India, vhere Hindu civilization was perpetuated
for centuries after the north had been conquered, government-made roads
are mentioned in the inscriptions; and "some of them are called kings
highways." The Muslim rulers of India continued the Indian rather
than the West Asian pattern in their effort to maintain a netvork of state
roads. Sher Shah (d. 1545) built four great roads, one of which ran frorn
Bengal to Acra, Delhi, and Lahore. Akbar is said to have been inspired
by Sher Shah when he built a new "king's highway," called the
Long Walk, which for four hundred miles was "shaded by great trees
on both sides."

In China, a gigantic network of highways was constructed immediately
after the establishment of the empire in 221 B.C.

{p. 42} EVIDENTLY the masters of hydraulic society, whether they
ruled in the Near East, India, China, or pre-Conquest America, were
great builders. The formula is usually invoked for both the aesthetic
and the technical aspect of the matter; and these two aspects are indeed
closely interrelated. ...

1. THE AESTHETIC ASPECT

a. Uneven Conspicuousness

THE majority of persons who have commented on the great builders of
Asia and ancient America are far more articulate on the non-hydraulic than
on the hydraulic achievements. Within the hydraulic sphere more attention
is again given to the aqueducts for drinking water and the navigation canals
than to the productive and protective installations of hydraulic agriculture.
In fact, these last are fre-

{p. 43} quently overlooked altogether. Among the nonhydraulic works,
the "big houses' of power and worship and the tombs of the great are
much more carefully investigated than are the large installations of communication
and defense.

This uneven treatment of the monster constructions of hydraulic society
is no accident. For functional, aesthetic, and social reasons the hydraulic
works are usually less impressive than the nonhydraulic constructions.
And similar reasons encourage uneven treatment also within each of the
two main categories.

Functionally speaking, irrigation canals and protective embankments
are widely and monotonously spread over the landscape, whereas the palaces,
tombs, and temples are spatially concentrated. Aesthetically speaking,
most of the hydraulic works are undertaken primarily for utilitarian purposes,
wllereas the residences of the rulers and priests, the houses of worship,
and the tombs of the great are meant to be beautiful. Socially speaking,
those who organize the distribution of manpower and material are the same
persons who particularly and directly enjoy the benefits of many nonhydraulic
structures. In consequence they are eager to invest a maximum of aesthetic
effort in these structures (palaces, temples, and capital cities)
and a minimum of such effort in all other works.

Of course, the contrast is not absolute. Some irrigation works, dikes,
aqueducts, navigation canals, highways, and defense walls do achieve considerable
functional beauty. And closeness to the centers of pover may lead the officials
in charge to construct embankments, aqueducts, highways, bridges, walls,
gates, and towers with as much care for aesthetic detail as material and
labor permit.

But these secondary tendencies do not alter the two basic facts that
the majority of all hydraulic and nonhydraulic public works are aesthetically
less conspicuous than the royal and official palaces, temples, and tombs,
and that the most important of all hydraulic works - the canals and dikes
- from the standpoint of art and artistry are the least spectacular of
all.

b. The Monumental Style

SUCH discrepancies notwithstanding, the palaces, government buildings,
temples and tombs share one feature with the "public" works proper:
they, too, tend to be large. The architectural style of hydraulic society
is monumental.

This style is apparent in the fortress-like settlements of the Pueblo
Indians. It is conspicuous in the palaces, temple cities, and fortresses
of ancient Middle and South America. It characterizes the tombs,

{p. 44} palace-cities, temples, and royal monuments of Pharaonic Egypt
and ancient Mesopotamia. No one who has ever observed the city gates and
walls of a Chinese capital, such as Peking, or who has walked through the
immense palace gates and squares of the Forbidden City to enter its equally
immense court buildings, ancestral temples, and private residences can
fail to be awed by their monumental design.

Pyramids and dome-shaped tombs manifest most consistently the monumental
style of hydraulic building. They achieve their aesthetic effect with a
minimum of ideas and a maximum of material. The pyramid is little more
than a huge pile of symmetrically arranged stones.

The property-based and increasingly individualistic society of ancient
Greece loosened up the massive architecture, which had emerged in the
quasihydraulic Mycenaean period. During the later part of the first millennium
B.C., when Alexander and his successors ruled the entire Near East, the
architectural concepts of Hellas transformed and refined the hydraulic
style without, however, destroying its monumental quality.

In Islamic architecture the two styles blended to create a third.
The products of this development were as spectacular in the westernmost
outpost of Islamic culture - Moorish Spain - as they were in the great
eastern centers: Cairo, Baghdad, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Istanbul. The
Taj Mahal of Agra and kindred buildings show the same forces at work in
India, a subcontinent which, before the Islamic invasion, had evolved a
rich monumental architecture of its own.

c. The Institutional Meaning

IT hardly needs to be said that other agrarian civilizations also combined
architectural beauty with magnitude. But the hydraulic rulers differed
from the secular and priestly lords of the ancient and medieval West, first
because their constructional operations penetrated more spheres of life,
and second because control over the entire country's labor power and material
enabled them to attain much more monumental results.

The scattered operations of rainfall farming did not involve the establishment
of national patterns of cooperation, as did hydraulic agriculture. The
many manorial centers of Europe's knighthood society gave rise to as many
fortified residences (castles); and their size was limited by the number
of the attached serfs. The king, being little more than the most important
feudal lord, had to build his castles vith whatever labor force his personal
domain provided.

The concentration of revenue in the regional or territorial centers

{p. 45} of ecclesiastical authority permitted the creation of the largest
individual medieval edifices: churches, abbeys, and cathedrals. It may
be noted that these buildings were erected by an institution which, in
contrast to all other prominent Western bodies, combined feudal with quasihydraulic
patterns of organization and acquisition.

With regard to social control and natural resourccs, hovever, the
master builders of the hydraulic state had no equal in the nonhydraulic
world. The modest Tower of London and the dispersed castles of Medieval
Europe express the balanced baronial society of the Magna Carta as clearly
as the huge administrative cities and colossal palaces, temples, and tombs
of Asia, Egypt, and ancient America express the organizational
coordination and the mobilization potential of hydraulic
economy and statecraft.

F. THE BULK OF ALL LARGE NONCONSTRUCTIONAL INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES MANAGED
ALSO BY THE HYDRAULIC GOVERNMENT

1. COMPARATIVE VIEW

A GOVERNMENT capable of handling all major hydraulic and nonhydraulic
construction may, if it desires, play a leading role also in the nonconstructional
branches of industry. There are "feeding" industries, such as
mining, quarrying, salt gathering, etc.; and there are finishing industries,
such as the manufacture of weapons, textiles, chariots, furnitllre, etc.
Insofar as the activities in these two spheres proceeded on a large scale,
they were for the most part either directly managed or monopolistically
controlled by the hydraulic governments. Under the conditions of Pharaonic
Egypt and Inca Peru, direct management prevailed. Under more diferentiated
social conditions, the government tended to leave part of mining, salt
gathering, etc to heavily taxed and carefully supervised entrepreneurs,
while it continued to manage directly most of the large manufacturing workshops.

{p. 47} 2. THE POWER OF THE HYDRAULIC STATE OVER LABOR GREATER THAN
THAT OF CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES

IN both spheres the hydraulic state levied and controlled the needed
labor forces by coercive methods that were invocable by a feudal lord only
within a restricted area, and that were altogether different from the methods
customary under capitalist conditions. The hydraulic rulers were sufficiently
strong to do on a national scale what a feudal sovereign or lord
could accomplish only within the borders of his domain. They compelled
able-bodied commoners to work for them through the agency of the corvee.

Corvee labor is forced labor. But unlike slave labor, which is demanded
permanently, corvee labor is conscripted on a temporary, although recurring,
basis. After the corvee service is completed, the worker is expected to
go home and continue with his own business.

Thus the corvee laborer is freer than the slave. But he is less free
than a wage laborer. He does not enjoy the bargaining advantages

{p. 48} of the labor market, and this is the case even if the state
gives him food (in the ancient Near East often "bread and beer")
or some cash. In areas with a highly developed money economy the hydraulic
government may levy a corvee tax and hire rather than conscript the needed
labor. This was done largely in China at the close of the Ming dynasty
and during the greater part of Ch'ing rule.

But there as elsewhere the government arbitrarily fixed the wage. And
it always kept the workers under quasimilitary discipline. ...

G. A GENUINE AND SPECIFIC TYPE OF MANAGERIAL REGIME

THUS the hydraulic state fulfilled a variety of important managerial
functions.a {see footnote} In most instances it maintained crucial hydraulic
rorks appearing in the agrarian sphere as the sole operator of large preparatory
and protective enterprises. And usually it also controlled the major nonhydraulic
industrial enterprises, especially large constructions. This was the case
even in certain "marginal" areas, where the hydrauic works were
insignificant.

The hydraulic state differs from the modern total managerial states
{Communist, Fascist, Nazi)in that it is based on agriculture and
operates only part of the country's economy. It differs from the laissez-faire
states of a private-property based industrial society in that, in its core
form, it fulfills crucial economic functions by means of commandeered (forced)
labor.

{footnote a} a. Social science is indebted to James Burnham for pointing
to the power potential inherent in managerial control. The present
inquiry stresses the importance of the general (political) organizer as
compared not only to the technical specialist (see Veblen, 1945: 441ff.),
but also to the economic manager. This, however, does not diminish the
author's appreciation of the contribution made by Burnham through his concept
of managerial leadership.

{But, on the other hand, it provides security whereas Capitalism makes
much of its workforce insecure}

{p. 49} CHAPTER 3 A state stronger than society

A. NONGOVERNMENTAL FORCES COMPETING WITH THE STATE FOR SOCIETAL LEADERSHIP

THE hydraulic state is a genuinely managerial state. This fact has far-reaching
societal implications. As manager of hydraulic and other mammoth constructions,
the hydraulic state prevents the nongovernmental forces of society from
crystallizing into independent bodies strong enough to counterbalance and
control the political machine.

The relations between the governmental and nongovernmental forces of
society are as manifold as the patterns of society itself. All governments
are concerned with the protection of the commonwealth against external
enemies (through the organization of military action) and with the maintenance
of internal order (through jurisdiction and policing methods of one kind
or another). The extent to which a government executes these and other
tasks depends on the way in which the societal order encourages, or restricts,
governmental activities on the one hand and the development of rival nongovernmental
forces on the other.

The nongovernmental forces aiming at social and political leadership
include kin groups (particularly under primitive conditions); representatives
of autonomous religious organizations (customary in certain primitive civilizations
but, as the history of the Christian Church shows, by no means confined
to them); independent or semi-independent leaders of military groups (such
as tribal bands, armies of feudal lords); and owners of various
forms of property (such as money, land, industrial equipment,
and capacity to work).

In some cases the rise of hydraulic despotism was probably contested
by the heads of poverful clans or by religious groups eager to preserve
their traditional autonomy. In others, semi-independent military leaders
may have tried to prevent the masters of the hydraulic apparatus from attaining
total control. But the rival forces lacked the proprietary and organizational
strength that in Greek and Roman antiquity as well as in Medieval Europe,
bulwarked the nongovernmental forces of society. In hydraulic civilizations
the men of the

{p. 50} government prevented the organizational consolidation of
all nongovernmental groups. Their state became "stronger than
society." Any organization that gives its representatives unchecked
power over its subjects may be considered an "apparatus." In
contrast to the controlled state of multicentered societies, the state
of the single-centered hydraulic society was a veritable apparatus state.

B. THE ORGANIZATIONAL POWER OF THE HYDRAULIC STATE

1. THE GREAT BUILDERS OF HYDRAULIC SOCIETY - GREAT ORGANIZERS

SUPERIOR organizational power may have different roots. In a hydraulic
setting the need for comprehensive organization is inherent in the comprehensive
constructions necessitated or suggested by the peculiarities of the agrarian
order.

These constructions pose numerous technical problems and they always
require large-scale organization. To say that the masters of hydraulic
society are great builders is only another way of saying they are great
organizers.

2. FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION: COUNTING AND RECORD KEEPING

AN organizer combines disparate elements into an integrated whole.
He may do this ex tempore if his aim is simple or passing. He must
make more elaborate preparations if he is confronted with a permanent and
difficult task. Dealing with human beings - their labor power, their military
potential, and their capacity to pay taxes - he must know their number
and condition. To this end he must count the people. And whenever he expects
to draw from them frequently and regularly, he must preserve the results
of his count either by memorizing them or, above the most primitive level,
by utilizing preliterary or literary symbols.

It is no accident that among all sedentary peoples the pioneers of
hydraulic agriculture and statecraft were the first to develop rational
systems of counting and writing. It is no accident either that the
records of hydraulic society covered not only the limited areas of single
cities or city states, of royal domains or feudal manors, but the towns
and villages of entire nations and empires. The masters of hydraulic society
were great builders because they were great organizers; and
they were great organizers because they were great record keepers.

{p. 52} The colored and knotted strings (quipus) by which the
Incas preserved the results of their frequent countings show that the lack
of a script constitutes no insurmountable barrier to numbering and registering
the population. In pre-Conquest Mexico the various forms of land and the
obligations attached were carefully depicted in codices; and the procedures
of local administrators were apparently based on these all-important documents.

In China an elaborate system of writing and counting existed as early
as the Yin (Shang) dynasty, that is, in the second millennium B.C.
Under the subsequent Chou dynasty census lists were used for determining
potential fighters and laborers and for estimating revenue and expenditures.
Specific evidence testifies to a detailed system of counting and registering
in the ruling state of Chou, and we know that at the close of the Chou
period the people were registered in the great northwestern country of
Ch'in, and also in Ch'i. In Ch'i the census is said to have been taken
every year in the autumn. It was in this season that people were also counted
under the first long-lived imperial dynasty, Han. Preserved bamboo records
indicate that the Han registers follow a regular pattern. The two sets
of Han census figures contained in the official history of the period are
the most comprehensive population data to come down to us from any major
contemporary civilization, including the Roman Empire.

The later history of the Chinese census presents many problems which
are far from solved. The methods and the accuracy of procedures changed
greatly witll time, but the government's role in the handling of these
matters cannot be doubted. In one way or another, the imperial bureaucracy
succeeded in keeping track of its human and material resources.

The same holds true for India. The Arthashastra and the Islamic
sources reveal the interest which both native and foreign rulers took
in counting their subjects and estimating their revenues. And this
interest was by no means academic. Megasthenes found various groups of
officials in the Maurya empire charged with such tasks as measuring the
fields and counting the people. Numerous inscriptions throw light on surveys
made during the last period of Hindu India.

After China, we are probably best informed on the Near Eastern development
of governmental counting and registering. The oldest deciphered inscriptions
dealing with the economy of a Mesopotamian temple city contain many
numerical data on land, people, agriculture and public services. In
Pharaonic Egypt the people were counted regularly from the time of the
Old Kingdom. Documentary evidence for the connection between the census
and fiscal and per-

{p. 53} sonal obligations exist only for the Middle and New Kingdoms,
but the absence of still earlier data on this point is certainly accidental.
On the eve of the Hellenistic period persons and property seem to have
been listed annually; and the Ptolemies probably perpetuated the ancient
system. The papyri suggest that there were two cadasters used for mutual
checking, one in the individual villages and one in the metropolis.

Under the succeeding regimes the methods of counting people and property,
particularly land, underwent many modifications, but as in India and China
the underlying principle continued to receive recognition. The Romans
inherited the Hellenistic pattern and the Arabs based their system on that
of Eastern Rome. The Mamluks upheld the time-honored system of record
keeping, as did the Ottoman Turks, who during the heyday of their power
insisted that "every thirty years a census must be taken, the dead
and the ill must be separated oflf, and those not on the rolls must be
newly recorded."

3. ORGANIZATIONAL AND HYDRAULIC MANAGEMENT

A GLANCE at the metropolitan and local centers of hydraulic record keeping
recalls the original meaning of the term "bureaucracy": "rule
through bureaus." The power of the agromanagerial regime was indeed
closely interlinked with the "bureaucratic" control which the
government exerted over its subjects. ...

{p. 78} The rulers of European absolutism schemed as ruthlessly and
killed as mercilessly as did their Eastern confleres. Hovever, their power
to persecute and appropriate was limited by the landed nobles the Church,
and the cities, whose autonomy the autocratic overlords could restrict,
but not destroy. In addition to this, the representatives of the new central
governments saw definite advantages in developing the newly rising capitalistic
forms of mobile property. Emerging from an agrarian order, which
they had never controlled or exploited in the hydraulic way, the Western
autocrats readily protected the incipient commercial and industrial
capitalists, whose increasing prosperity increasingly benefited their
protectors.

In contrast, the masters of hydraulic society spun their fiscal
web firmly over their country's agrarian economy. And they were under
no pressure to favor the urban capitalists as did the postfeudal Western
rulers. At best, they treated what capitalist enterprise there was
like a useful garden. At worst, they clipped and stripped the bushes of
capital-based business to the stalk.

D. HYDRAULIC PROPERTY - WEAK PROPERTY

1. FOR WAYS OF WEAKENING PRiVATE PROPERTY

IN a number of stratified civilizations the representatives of private
property and enterprise were sufficiently strong to check the power of
the state. Under hydraulic conditions the state restricted the development
of private property through fiscal, judicial, legal, and political
measures.

In the preceding pages we have discussed the pertinent fiscal and judicial
methods (taxes, frame-ups, and confiscations). Before turnin(J to the political
aspect of the matter we must first deal with a legal institution which,
perhaps more than any other, has caused the periodic fragmentation of private
property: the hydraulic (Oriental) laws of inheritance.

2. HYDRAULIC LAWS OF INHERITANCE: THE PRINCIPLE

Throughout the hydraulic world the bulk of a deceased person's
property is transferred not in accordance vith his will but in accordance
with customary or written laws. These laws prescribe an equal, or approximately
equal, division of property among the heirs, most frequently the sons and
other close male relatives. Among the sons, the eldest often has special
duties to fulfill. He must care for his mother and his younger siblings;
and he may be primarily responsible for the religious obligations of the
family. The laws take all this into account. But their modification does
not upset the basic effect: the parceling out of a deceased person's estate
among his heirs.

3. THE APPLICATION

IN Pharaonic Egypt the eldest son, who had important ceremonial tasks,
received a larger share of his father's estate. But the remaining children
also could claim a legal]y prescribed share of the total.

The principle of more or less even division is clearly stated in the
Babylonian code. A present made by a father during his lifetime to the
first-born is not included in the final settlement, but "otherwise
they [the sons] shall share equally in the goods of the paternal estate."
Assyrian lav is more complicated. Again the eldest son has an advantage,
but all other brothers are entitled to their share.

In India the eldest son's originally privileged position was gradually
reduced, until the difference between him and other heirs virtually disappeared.
In the Islamic world inheritance was complicated by a number of factors,
among them the freedom to will up to one-third of an estate. But the system
of "Koranic heirs" is definitely fragmenting: it strictly prescribes
division among several persons. The last imperial code of China reasserts
what seems to have been regular practice during the whole period of "developed"
private property. A family's possessions must be divided equally among
all sons. Failure to comply was punishable by up to one hundred blows w
ith a heavy stick.

In Inca Peru the bulk of all land was regulated by the state and its
local aoencies. Some grants made to relatives of the ruler or meritorious
military or civil officials might be transferred hereditarily; but the
usufruct from the inherited land was subject to equal

{p. 80} division. In Aztec Mexico the bulk of all land was occupied
by village communities and thus barred from full transfer at the will of
the possessor. Some land, privately held by members of the ruling group,
was after the holder's death divided among his heirs.

4. THE EFFECT

a. On Regulated Villages

A LAW of inheritance which prescribes a periodic division of private
property affects different groups in hydraulic society differently. Peasants
who live in regulated village communities may divide the movable property
of a deceased family head, but not his fields. These must be kept intact
or, from time to time, reassigned according to the recognized prerogatives
or needs of the members of the community.

b. On Holders of Small Private Property

ENTIRELY new problems arise when the peasants own their land privately
and freely. Scarcity of food may reduce the number of potential heirs,
and this is an important demographic factor in all hydraulic societies.
However, the will to live often outwits want; and despite periodic or perpetual
shortages, the population tends to increase. This inevitably means smaller
farms, more toil, more hardship, and, frequently, flight, banditry, and
rebellion

Demographic pressures are certainly not lacking in regulated villages.
But they are particularly serious where private landed property is the
rule. For in such areas the impoverishment of the economically weaker elements
is not counterbalanced, or retarded by the corporate economy of the village,
which prevents both individual economic advance and collapse.

c. On Holders of Large Private Property

AMONG the wealthy property owners another factor of hydraulic demography
becomes important: polygamy. In hydraulic civilizations rich persons
usually have several wives; and the greater their fortune, the larger
their harem is apt to be. The possibility of having several sons increases
proportionately. But several sons mean several heirs; and several heirs
mean a quicker reduction of the original property through equal inheritance.

Commenting on the dynamics of Chinese traditional society, two
modern social scientists, Fei and Chang, find it "all too true"
that

{p. 81} in this society "land breeds no land." Why? "The
basic truth is that enrichment through exploitation of land, using the
traditional technology, is not a practical method of accumulating wealth."
Landed wealth tends to shrink rather than to grow; and this essentially
because of the law of inheritance; "so long as the customary
principle of equal inheritance among siblings exists, time is a strong
disintegrative force in landholding."

The Islamic law of inheritance has a similarly disintegrative
effect. Wherever it prevails, it "must in the long run lead to the
inevitable parceling out even of the largest property. ..." The land
grants in the Inca empire apparently fared no better. After a few
generations the revenue received by individual heirs might shrink to insignificance.

5. PERTIENT WESTERN DEVELOPMENTS

a. The Democratic City States of Ancient Greece

THE fragmentation of landed property through more or less equal inheritance
is certainly a significant institution. But are we justified in considering
it characteristic primarily for hydraulic civilizations? "The rule
of dividing up an estate on succession" also operated in the city
states of classical Greece. Consistently applied, it "split up
the land without ceasing." In the 4th century "apart from one
exceptional case, the largest property which Attica could show ... measured
300 plethra or 64 acres." Glotz adds: "This state of things was
common to the democratic cities."

b. The United States after the War of Independence

AND then there is the fight against entail and primogeniture in the
early days of the United States. During and immediately after the American
Revolution the spokesmen of the young republic vigorously attacked the
perpetuities, which were correctly described as remnants of Europe's feudal
tradition. Once the law of entail was abolished the colossal aristocratic
landholdings quickly dissolved. "By about the year 1830 most of the
great estates of America had vanished."

c. A Spectacular Contrast: the Strength of Landed Property in Late
Feudal and Postfeudal Europe

SIMILAR attempts at breaking the power of large landed property were
made in Europe after the close of the feudal period. The

{p. 82} governments of the new territorial and national states attacked
entail and primogeniture through a variety of measures, statutory enactments
prevailing on the continent and judicial reforms in England. Resourceful
protagonists of absolutism lent the struggle impetus and color. But in
the leading countries of Western and Central Europe the governments
were unable for a long time to abolish the perpetuation of big property.
In France this institution persisted intact until the Revolution,
and in a modified form until 1849. In England and Germany it was discarded
only in the 20th century.

6. DIFFERENT SOCAL FORCES OPPOSED TO PROPR1ETARY PERPETUITIES

a. Small and Mobile Property

MANIFESTLY, the perpetuation of large landed property may be opposed
by different social forces. The Greek legislators, vho, according to Aristotle,
recognized the influence of the equalization of property on political society,
very possibly did not identify themselves with one particular social group
or class. But their efforts benefited smaller rural property as well as
the new forms of mobile (urban) property and enterprise. It stands to reason
that the groups which profited from a weakening of big landed property
accomplished this result through methods that became increasingly effective
as the city states became increasingly democratized.

In the young United States Jefferson fought for the abolishment of entail
and primogeniture as a necessary step toward the elimination of "feudal
and unnatural distinctions." And he based his policy on a philosophy
which distrusted commerce and industry as much as it trusted the independent
landowning farmers. Middle and small rural property may not have been directly
represented among those who wrote the Constitution; but its influence was
nevertheless great. The Revolution, which was started by protesting merchants
and rioting mechanics, was actually "carried to its bitter end by
the bayonets of fighting farmers."

And not only this. A few decades after the Revolution the agricultural
frontier prevailed so effectively over the commercial and banking interests
of the coastal towns that it "brought about the declaration of hostilities
against England in 1812." It therefore seems legitimate to claim that
it was a combination of independent rural (farming) and mobile urban
property that brought about the downfall of the feudal
system of entail and primogeniture in the United States.

{p. 83} b. The Slates of Feudal and Postfeudal Europe

THE consolidation of feudal and postfeudal landed property in Europe
was challenged by a very different force. At the height of the conflict
the attack was conducted by the representatives of the absolutist state;
and the external resemblance to the Oriental version of the struggle makes
it all the more necessary to understand the exact nature of what happened
in the West.

Why were the feudal lords of Europe able to buttress their landed
property to such an extraordinary degree? Because, as indicated
above, in the fragmented society of Medieval Europe the national
and territorial rulers lacked the means to prevent it. Of course,
the sovereign, the most powerful master of land and men, did exercise a
certain public authority. He claimed certain military services from his
seigneurs, vassals, or lords; he had certain supreme judicial functions,
he was expected to handle the foreign relations of his country; and his
authority vas strengthened by the fact that the bulk of his vassals held
their fiefs only as long as they fulfilled the obligations mentioned in
the investiture. Thus the lords were originally possessors rather than
owners of their lands; and they remained so, at least theoretically, even
after tenure became hereditary.

This state of affairs has been frequently described. With certain differences
- which became especially important in such countries as post-Conquest
England - it prevailed in the greater part of Western and Central Europe
during the formative period of feudalism. Hovever, the conventional picture
stresses much more strongly the relation between the feudal lord and his
ruler than the relation between the various lords. From the point
of viev of proprietary development, the second is pivotal.

No matter whether the baron held his fief temporarily or hereditarily,
his life was centered in his own castle and not at the royal court,
it was his detached position that determined his personal and social contacts.
The king might claim the military services of his vassal for some few weeks;
but beyond this contractually limited period - which might be extended
if proper payments were offered - he was unable to control his movements.
The baron or knight was free to use his soldiers for private feuds. He
was free to engage in the chase, in tournaments, and in expeditions of
various kinds. And most important, he was free to meet with lordly neighbors
who, likee himself, were eager to promote their joint interests.

The atomized character of the political order stimulated the association
of the local and regional vassals, who singly were no match for the sovereign
but who together might successfully oppose him. In

{p. 84} the race between the growth of lordly (and burgher) power on
the one hand and royal power on the other, the rising central governments
found themselves confronted not by the scattered feudal and urban forces
of the early days but by organized estates capable of defending
their economic as well as their social rights. ...

c. Hydraulic Absolutism Succeeded Where the States of Occidental
Feudalism and Asolutism Failed

In late feudal and postfeudal Europe the state recognized a system
of inheritance for the landed nobles which favored one son at the expense
of all others. And in the modern Western world the state by and large
permitted the individual to dispose of his property at will. The hydraulic
state gave no equivalent freedom of decision either to holders of mobile
property or to the landowners. Its laws of

{p. 85} inheritance insisted upon a more or less equal division
of the deceased's estate, and thereby upon a periodic fragmentation
of property. ...

7. THE ORGANIZATIONAL IMPOTENCE OF HYDRAULIC PROPERTY HOLDERS

As an armed and ubiquituously organized force, the hydraulic regime
prevailed in the strategic seats of mobile property, the cities, as well
as in the main sphere of immobile property, the countryside. Its cities
were administrative and military footholds of the government; and the artisans
and merchants had no opportunity to become serious political rivals. Their
professional associations need not have been directly attached to the state,
but they certainly failed to create strong and independent centers of corporate
burgher power such as arose in many parts of Medieval Europe.

{p. 86} The countryside fared no better. The owners of land were either
wealthy businessmen and as limited in the scope of their organization as
were the representatives of mobile property, or - and more often - they
were officials or priests, and a part of - or in association witll - the
nationally organized bureaucracy. This bureaucracy might permit its property-holding
members or associates to establish local organizations, such as the Chinese
"sash-bearers" (inadequately translated as "gentry")
and as the priests of various temples or creeds. But it discouraged any
attempt to coordinate landed property on a national scale and in the form
of independent corporations or estates.

The holders of family endowments (waqfs) in the Islamic Near
East kept their land undivided, because these lands were destined ultimately
to serve religions and charitable purposes. ...

SIMILAR causes led to similar results also in the field of religion.
The hydraulic state, which permitted neither relevant independent
military nor proprietary leadership, did not favor the rise of independent
religious power either. Nowhere in hydraulic society did the dominant
religion place itself outside the authority of the state as a nationally
(or internationally) integrated autonomous church.

1. SOLE, DOMINANT, AND SECONDARY RELIGIONS

A DOMINANT religion may have no conspicuous competitors. This is often
the case in simpler cultures, where the only relevant representatives of
heterodox ideas and practices are sorcerers and witches. Here the very
problem of choice is lacking; and the hydraulic leaders readily identify
themselves with the dominant religion.

Secondary religions usually originate and spread under relatively differentiated
institutional conditions. Wherever such beliefs are given a chance to persist
(non-Hindu creeds in India; Taoism and Buddhism in Confucian China; Christianity
and Judaism under Islam), the rulers tend with time to identify themselves
with the dominant doctrine. It need scarcely be asserted that in the present
context the word "dominant" merely refers to the social
and political aspects of the matter. It implies no religious value judgment.
Whether the societally dominant religion is also superior in terms of its
religious tenets is an entirely different (and legitimate) question, but
one which does not come within the scope of the present study.

2. RELICIOUS AUTHORITY ATTACHED TO THE HYDRAULIC STATE

a. The Hydraulic Regime - Occasionally (quasi-) Hierocratic

IN seeking to determine the relation between hydraulic power and the
dominant religion, we must first discard a widespread misconception. In
the hydraulic world, as in other agrarian societies, religion plays
an enormous role; and the representatives of religion tend to be numerous.
However, the importance of an institution does not necessarily imply its
autonomy. As explained above, the government-supported armies of hydraulic
civilizations are usually large, but the same factors which make them
large keep them dependent.

{p. 88} ... The majority of all hydraulic civilizations are characterized
by large and influential priesthoods. Yet it would be wrong to designate
them as hierocratic, "ruled by priests." Many attempts have been
made to determine the meaning of the word "priest" ...

Obviously the priest has to be qualified to carry out his religious
tasks, which generally include the offering of sacrifices as well as prayers.
A qualified priest may give only a fraction of his time to his religious
duties, the greater part of it being spent to insure his livelihood, or
he may serve professionally, that is, full time. ...

The city states of ancient Sumer are said to have been usually ruled
by the head priests of the leading city temples, and the prominent courtiers
and government officials, who had an important role in the administration
of the temple estates, were quite possibly also qualified priests. But
did these men, who were theologically

{p. 89} trained, still have time to fulfill the many religious functions
of a professional priest? Deimel assumes that the priest-kings officiated
in the templies only on particularly solemn occasions. Their subordinates
were kept equally busy by their secular duties - and equally restricted
in their religious activities. ...

The Babylonian pattern is much more frequent than the Sumerian. As a
rule, the hydraulic governments were administered by professional officials
who, though perhaps educated by priests, were not trained to be priests.
The majority of all qualifled and professional priests remained occupied
with their religious tasks, and the employment of individual priests in
the service of the state did not make the government a hierocracy.

{p. 90} b. The Hydraulic Regime - Frequently Theocratic

THE constructional, organizational, and acquisitive activities of hydraulic
society tend to concentrate all authority in a directing center: the central
government and ultimately the head of this government, the ruler. From
the dawn of hydraulic civilization it was upon this center that the magic
powers of the commonwealth tended to converge. The bulk of all religious
ceremonies may be performed by a specialized priesthood, which frequently
enjoys considerable freedom. But in many hydraulic societies the supreme
representative of secular authority is also the embodiment of supreme religious
authority.

Appearing as either a god or a descendant of a god, or as high priest,
such a person is indeed a theocratic (divine) or quasitheocratic (pontifical)
ruler. Obviously, the theocratic regime need be neither hierocratic nor
quasihierocratic. Even if the divine or pontifical sovereign was trained
as a priest, the majority of his officials would not necessarily have to
be so qualified. ...

In Homeric Greece the king was of divine origin, and his preeminence
in religious matters was so strong that he has been called the "chief
priest." Subsequent democratic developments did not destroy the relation
between state and religion; but they placed the control of both types of
activities in the hands of the citizens. Strictly supervised by the citizen
community, the state religion of ancient Greece developed neither a clerical
hierarchy nor a closed priestly order. As a rule, those destined to officiate
as priests were chosen by either lot or election. Hence they lacked the
training which plays so great a role in professional and self-perpetuating
priesthoods. The finances of the temples were strictly controlled by politi-

{p. 91} cal authorities, who in their majority were similarly chosen.
Moreover, governmental leaders were not considered divine, nor did they
act as high priests or heads of any coordinated religious order. The designation
"theocracy," which may be applied to the primitive conditions
of early Greece, therefore hardly fits the "serving" citizen
state of the democratic period.

In the great agrarian civilizations of Medieval Europe, nontheocratic
development went still further. Attempts by Pepin and Charlemagne to
establish theocratic authority were unable to reverse the trend toward
feudal decentralization. Among the many secondary centers of proprietary,
military, and political power, which restricted the authority of the national
and territorial rulers, the Church proved eminently effective, since
a unified doctrine and an increasingly unified leadership endowed its quasiteudal
local units with quasi-Oriental organizational strength. After a
prolonged period of intense conflict, the Church gained full autonomy.
In the 11th century the French crown "had given way to the Holy See,"
and the German Emperor Henry IV humiliated himself before Pope Gregory
VII. For some time the struggle between secular and ecclesiastical power
continued inconclusively, until Innocent III (1198-1216) raised papal authority
to such a peak that he could try, although without success, to subordinate
the state to the leadership of the Church.

{This "Norman" Roman Church also took away the independence
of the Irish Church at that time; although the preserver of Christianity
after Rome fell, and the source of missionaries to the continent, it had
retained many traditional Celtic practices}

Among the many manifestations of autonomous ecclesiastical behavior
the English instance is particularly instructive. In 1215 the English bishops
together with the feudal lords forced King John to recognize, in the Magna
Carta, the legitimacy of a balanced constitutional government. The Carta
was "'primarily' a concession made 'to God' in favour of the Anglican
Church. ... By the first article the king granted 'the English Church should
be free, enjoy its full rights and its liberties inviolate' and, in particular
'that liberty which is considered the greatest and the most necessary for
the English Church, freedom ot elections.' Article 42 concerning freedom
to leave the kingdom involved for the clergy the extremely important right
to go to Rome without the king's permission."

The Church under the Carta was not just one of several groups of effectively
organized feudal landowners. In its national as well as in its international
organization it was different from, and in a way superior to, the corporations
of the secular nobility. Furthermore, it struggled for autonomy as a religious
body with specific religious objectives and claims. But however crucial
these peculiarities were, the Church could not have checked the power
of the political regime if it had not, at the same time, strengthened the

{p. 92} proprietary and organizational forces of the secular nobility.
As the religious sector of these forces, the Church in the agrarian society
of Medieval Europe became an essentially independent entity. In achieving
this goal, it fatefully supported the growth of the balanced late feudal
order, which eventually gave birth to modern Western society.

{p. 94} The Achaemenian kings {of the First Persian Empire},
who through conquest made themselves masters of the entire Near East, are
said to have lacked divinity. Did they retain in their Persian homeland
certain of their earlier nontheocratic concepts? Or were they worshiped
as divine beings by their Persian subjects, because they were imbued with
a divine substance? Whatever the answer to these questions may be, the
victorious Cyrus adopted in Babylonia "all the elements of Chaldean
monarchy," including royal divinity; and his successors acted similarly
in Egypt. Like all earlier Egyptian rulers known to us Darius
was called divine: "Horus" and the "good god."

The Hellenistic sovereigns of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires
quickly learned to combine religious and secular authority. Significantly
the worship of the king was less fully developed at the institutional fringe
of the hvdraulic world, in Anatolia. But here, too the Hellenistic rulers
definitely, if cautiously, sought theocratic status.

The Romans adopted many of the institutions of their new Oriental
possessions. Acceptance of the emperor's divinity was gradual; but
the beginnings of emperor worship go back to the early days of the empire.
The cult, vhich had already been proposed bv Caesar, was officially established
by the first emperor, Augustus.

{p. 95} In Early Byzantium, Christianity adjusted itself to an autocratlc
regime that felt "completely competent to legislate in all religious
as in all secular affairs"; but it proved incompatible with the concept
of a divine ruler. Despite significant efforts to assert the quasidivine
quality of the emperor, the Byzantine government was, according
to our criteria, at best marginally theocratic.

Islam objects to the divinization of the ruler for reasons of
its own: Mohammad was Allah's prophet, not his son; and the caliph,
who inherited the prophet's authority, had no divine status. Although
he was in charge of important religious matters, he cannot well be called
a high priest either. Measuring the position of the caliph by our
criteria, we therefore, and in conformity with expert opinion, consider
it neither theocratic nor hierocratic.

In China the ruler emerges in the light of history as the
supreme authority both in secular and religious matters. Whether the
traditional designation, "Son of Heaven," reflects an earlier
belief in the sovereign's divinity, we do not know. The overlords of the
Chou empire and of the subsequent imperial dynasties, who all used this
appellation, were considered humans, yet they occupied a quasitheocratic
position. Entrusted with the Mandate of Heaven, they controlled
the magic relations with the forces of nature by elaborate sacrifices.
In the great religious ceremonies the ruler and his central and local officials
assumed the leading roles, leaving only secondary functions to the professional
sacerdotalists and their aides. The emperor was the chief performer in
the most sacred of all ceremonies, the sacrifice to Heaven; and he was
the chief performer also in the sacrifices to Earth, for the prospering
of the crop, for the early summer rains, and for the national deities of
Soil and Millet. Some of these rites were confined to the national capital.
Others were also enacted in the many regional and local subcenters of state
power by distinguished provincial, district, or community officials: the
great rain sacrifice, the ceremonial plowing, the sacrifices to Confucius
and to the patron of agriculture, etc.

To sum up: in the Chinese state religion, the ruler and a hierarchy
of high officials fulfilled crucial priestly functions ...

{p. 114} Marx speaks of the "general slavery" of the Orient.
According to him, this type of slavery, which is inherent in man's attachment
to the hydraulic commonwealth and state, differs essentially from Western
slavery and serfdom. The merit of Marx' formula lies in the problem it
raises rather than in the answer it gives. A person commandeered to toil
for an "Asiatic" state is a slave of the state as long as he
is so occupied. He is perfectly aware of the lack of freedom, which this
condition involves, and he is equally aware of the pleasure of working
for himself. Compared with the total state slavery of the total managerial
industrial society, the partial state slavery of the partial managerial
hydraulic society makes indeed considerable concessions to human freedom.

b. Limitations of Thought Control

A COMPARABLE tendency to make concessions arises also in the sphere
of thought control. To appreciate fully what this means, we must understand
the enormous stress that the masters of the hydraulic state place on the
society's dominant ideas. The close coordination of secular and religious
authority makes it easy to apply this stress to both the higher and the
lower strata of society. The sons of the dominant elite are generally educated
by representatives of the dominant creed; and the whole population is in
continued and government-promoted contact with the state-attached temples
and their priesthoods.

Education usually is a long process, and its influence is profound.
In India the young Brahmin who prepared himself for priestly office
had to study one, two, or all three Vedas, applying himself to each
one of them for twelve long years. And the members of the "protecting"
Kshatriya caste, and even those of the next lower caste the Vaisya, were
also advised to study the Sacred Books. In China "learning" -
the study of the canonical (classical) writings - was already considered
a basic prerequisite for administrative office in Confucius' time. Increasing
systematization led to the holding of

{p. 115} elaborate and graded examinations, which fostered perpetual
ideoIogical alertness in all energetic and ambitious young, and in many
middle-aged and even elderly, members of the ruling class.

But the same societal forces that led to the systematic perpeuation
of the dominant ideas also encouraged a variety of secondary religions.
Many simple hydraulic civilizations tolerated independent diviners and
sorcerers, whose artisan-like small-scale activities modestly supplemented
the coordinated operations of the leading tribal or national creed. Under
more complex conditions, ideological divergence tended to increase. Often
the subject of a hydraulic state might adhere to a secondary religion without
endangering his life. Non-Brahministic creeds, such as Jainism or Buddhism,
are documented for India from the first millennium B.C. Buddhism persisted
in traditional China, despite temporary persecutions, for almost two thousand
years. And the Islamic Near East, India, and Central Asia were similarly
indulgent.

In the ideological as in the managerial sphere, the policies of the
agrarian apparatus state contrast strikingly with policies of the modern
industrial apparatus states, which, while feigning respect for traditional
("national") culture and religion, spread the Marxist-Leninist
doctrine with the avowed aim of eventually annihilating all other ideologies.
...

{p. 118} In Arab Egypt, as in Byzantine Egypt, the village administration
was in the hands of a headman and the elders. Under the Arabs the headman,
who possibly was nominated by the peasants and confirmed by the government,
seems to have apportioned and collected the tax. He designated the corvee
laborers and exercised police and judicial functions.

In the Arab provinces of the Turkish Near East the village headman (shetkh)
assisted the official and semi-official representatives of the government
in allocating the tax. He "policed the fellahs who cultivated the
lands under his charge, and the principal seyh acted as magistrate
and arbitrator, with authority not only over the culti-

{p. 119} vators but over all the inhabitants." Controlling "his"
peasants in an arbitrary way and being in turn controlled with equal severity
by the state bureaucracy, he certainly was not the representative of a
free rural village community.

In India the village headman may have been elected originally; but from
the time of the later Law Books on - that is, from the end of the first
millennium B.C. - his appointment is documented. As the king's representative
in the villages, who "collected taxes for him" and who also fulfilled
policing and judicial functions, the headman held a position of authority
not dissimilar to that en]oyed by his Near Eastern counterpart. Muslim
rule did not fundamentally change this administratively convenient arrangement,
which in fact persisted in the majority of all Indian villages up to modern
times. ...

All these activities linked the headman to the central government, although
he was not part of its bureaucracy. The villagers found it hard to bring
a complaint against him, even if their case was good, for he monopolized
communication with the district magistracy.

{p. 126} C. HYDRAULIC DESPOTISM - BENEVOLENT DESPOTISM?

1. TOTAL POWER - FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE?

THE hydraulic state is not checked by a Beggars' Democracy. Nor is it
checked by any other effective constitutional, societal, or cultural counterweights.
Clearly it is despotic. But does it not at the same time benefit the people?

2. THE CLAIM AND THE REALITY

a. Operational Necessity Not to Be Confused with Benevolence

THE hydraulic state is a managerial state, and certain of its operations
do indeed benefit the people. But since the rulers depend on these operations
for their own maintenance and prosperity, their policies can hardly be
considered benevolent. A pirate does not act benevolently when he keeps
his ship afloat or feeds the slaves he plans to sell. Capable of recognizing
his future as well as his present advantages, he is rational but not benevolent.
His behavior may temporarily benefit the persons in his power; but this
is not its primary purpose. Given a choice, he will further his own interests,
and not the interests of others.

{p. 136} Confucius' gentleman bureaucrat, the ideal ruler of the
Bhagavadgita, and the "just" statesmen of the ancient
Roman or Islamic Near East all try to be fair within the framework
of a society which takes the patterns of despotic power, revenue,
and prestige for granted.

7. HYDRAULIC DESPOTISM: BENEVOLENT IN FORM, OPPRESSIVE IN CONTENT

THUS agromanagerial despots may present their regimes as benevolent;
actually, however, and even under the most favorable circumstances, they
strive for their own, and not for the people's, rationality optimum. They
plan their hydraulic enterprises according to what benefits their might
and wealth. And they write their own ticket as fiscal masters of the national
surplus and as conspicuous consumers.

Stalin claims that in a modern industrial apparatus state the
culture of a national minority is national in form and socialist in content.
Experience shows that the "socialist" (read: apparatchik)
substance quickly wipes out all but the most insignificant national elements.
A similar mechanism is at work in the agrarian apparatus state. Paraphrasing
Stalin's formula and replacing myth by reality, we may truthfully say that
hydraulic despotism is benevolent in form and oppressive in content.

{p. 127} CHAPTER 5 Total terror - total submission - total loneliness

A. AUTONOMOUS MAN UNDER TOTAL POWER

MAN is no ant. His efforts to escape from freedom show him ambivalently
attracted by what he ambivalently abandons. The urge to act independently
is an essential attribute of homo sapiens, and a highly complex one. Not
all of its components are socially valuable; but among them is man's most
precious motivating force: the urge to obey his conscience, all external
disadvantages notwithstanding.

What happens to man's desire for autonomy under the conditions of total
power? One variant of total power, hydraulic despotism, tolerates no relevant
political forces besides itself. In this respect it succeeds on the institutional
level because it blocks the development of such forces; and it succeeds
on the psychological level, because it discourages man's desire for independent
political action. In the last analysis, hydraulic government is government
by intimidation.

{But is not the government of George W. Bush one of intimidation? Do
not private forces reign unchecked?}

B. TERROR ESSENTIAL FOR MAINTAINING THE RULERS' RATIONALITY OPTIMUM

1. THE NEED

MAN is no ant. But neither is he a stone. A policy that upholds the
rulers' publicity optimum confuses the people's mind, without however eliminating
their feelings of frlstration and unhappiness. Unchecked, these feelings
may lead to rebellious action. To counter this dangerous trend the hydraulic
regime resorts to intimidation. Terror is the inevitable consequence of
the rulers' resolve to uphold their own and not the people's rationality
optimum.

{p. 138} 2. ITS OFFICIAL RECOGNITION: PUNISHMENT IS THE KING!

MANY spokesmen of hydraulic despotism have emphasized the need for rule
by punishment. Such a policy may be justified by the argument that guiltless
people are few. Confucius preferred education to punishment; yet he,
too, believed that it would take a hundred years of good
government "to transform the violently bad and to dispense
with capital punishment."

Thus with varying arguments, punishment has been viewed as an essential
tool of successful statecraft. The Hindu law book of Manu establishes fear-inspiring
punishment as the foundation of internal peace and order. Punishment, which
- of course - must be just, makes everyone behave properly. Without it
caste barriers would be crossed; and all men would turn against their fellows.
"Where Punishment with a black hue and red eye stalks about,"
subjects live at peace. "The whole world is kept in order by punishment."

By punishment the ruler protects the weak against the strong,
sacrifice against animal violation, property against its (nongovernmental)
enemies and social superiority against assaults from below. ...

The rulers of ancient Mesopotamia claimed that they received their
power from the great Enlil. This terrifying god symbolizes "the
power of force, of compulsion. Opposing wills are crushed and beaten into
submission." Although he is supposed to use his cruel might judiciously,
"man can never be fully at ease with Enlil but feels a lurking fear."
This being so, the sovereign's readiness to identify himself with Enlil
or with deities descended from him is deeply significant. The Sumerian
kings usually identified themselves with Enlil directly. The Babylonians
upheld the basic idea, but modified it. Hammurabi pictured himself as
having been "called" by Enlil; and he names Enlil's son,
Sin, as his divine father. In both cases the Mesopotamian rulers stressed
the terroristic quality of their postion.

{Compare Wittfogel's caricature with S. G. F. Branson's account of the
Gilgamesh Epic, source of the story of Adam and Eve: adam-and-eve.html;
with Samuel Noah Kramer's account ofthe Sacred Marriage Rite, origin
of the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) in the Bible: jewish-taoist.html}

The terror inherent in Pharaonic despotism is symbolized by the
poisonous Uraeus snake, which lies coiled on the ruler's forehead and threatens
his enemies with destruction. The king's actions are

{p. 139} also compared with those of the fear-inspiring lion goddess,
Sekhmet.

Chinese statecraft learned to express its need for terrifying punishment
in the rational and moral form of Confucianism. But punishment was
the primary weapon of the so-called Legalists and of such Legalist-influenced
Confucianists as Hsun Tsu. And it remained a cornerstone of official policy
throughout the imperial period. What we would call the Ministry of Justice
was known in traditional China as the Ministry of Punishments.

The Islamic ruler saw to it that he was both respected and feared. The
Arabian Nights, which depicts Harun al-Rashld usually accompanied by his
executioner, presents in fictional dress a historic truth. The executioner
was a standard feature of the Abbassid court.

3. THE MORPHOLOGY OF VIOLENCE

To be sure, all governments deserving the name have ways of imposing
their will on their subjects, and the use of violence is always among them.
But different societies develop different patterns of integrating (or fragmenting)
violence and of controlling (or not controlling) it.

a. Integrated versus Fragmented Patterns of Violence

IN ancient Greece, free men ordinarily wore arms - according to Thucydides,
"because their homes uere undefended." In other words, the government
did not monopolize the use of force. With the growth of public safety the
early custom disappeared in most city states; but the citizens, who were
potential warriors, were still permitted to keep the tools of violence
in their homes. Pictorial evidence portraying the start of a campaign shows
"mostly the woman bringing the weapons from the home to the departing
man."

In Medieval Europe the semi-independent feudal lords from the beginning
represented important secondary centers of military action, and in the
course of time many towns developed their own armed forces. These feudal
and urban nuclei of political and military life were free to use violence
both within their own jurisdictions and against one another.

{p. 156} The fear of getting involved with an uncontrollable and unpredictable
government confines the prudent subject to the narrow realm of his personal
and professional affairs. This fear separates him effectively from other
members of the wider community to which he also belongs.

2. THE ALIENATION POTENTIAL OF TOTAL POWER

OF course, separation is not necessarily alienation: an artisan whose
forebears left their rural community may consider himself different from
the inhabitants of his home village. Or an intellectual may feel himself
out of tune with his co-nationals, or in times of crisis he may completely
reject a social order that apparently has no use for

{p. 157} him. In such situations he may know loneliness. But as long
as he can join with others of like mind, his alienation from society will
be only partial.

And this partial alienation differs profoundly from total alienation.
Only when a person believes he is deserted by all his fellows and when
he is unable to see himself as an autononnous and innerdirected entity,
only then can he be said to experience total alienation. Under the terror
of the semimanagerial agrarian apparatus state he may know total loneliness
without total alienation. Under the terror of the modern total managerial
apparatus state he may suffer total alienation. Persistent isolation
and brainwashing may bring him to the point where he no longer realizes
he is being dehumanized.

3. EVERY DAY ADJUSTMENTS

THERE were many lonely people among the free men of classical Greece;
and there are many lonely people in the democratic countries of today.
But these free individuals are lonely in the main because they are neglected
and not because they are threatened by a power that, whenever it wants
to, can reduce human dignity to nothingness. A neglected person can maintain
associations of some kind with a few relatives or friends; and he may overcome
his passive and partial alienation by widening his associations or by establishing
new ways of belonging.

The person who lives under conditions of total power is not so privileged.
Unable to counteract these conditions, he can take refuge only in alert
resignation. Eager to avoid the worst, he must always be prepared to face
it. Resignation has been an attitude of many free individuals at different
times and in different segments of open and semi-open societies. But prior
to the rise of the industrial apparatus state it was a predominant attitude
mainly within the realm of Oriental despotism. Significantly, stoicism
arose in antiquity when the balanced society of classical
Greece gave way to the Hellenistic system of total power initiated by Alexander.

{p. 158} Socrates' end was u e in several ways, but it was typical for
one aspect of enforced death in an open society. Sentenced to die
for politically "corrupting" the youth of Athens, he was not
made to denounce his acts publicly. Nor was he deprived of the company
and admiration of his friends. His ordeal, far from alienating him from
his followers - or from his ideas - cemented his union with both.

{So Wittfogel is juxtaposing the "Open Society" with the "Managerial
State". But this "Open Society" is based on "Free Trade",
in which everyone is pitted against everyone else: opensoc.html}

In an open society governmental disapproval may leave the criti-

{p. 159} cized citizen cold; but under conditions of total power, official
displeasure may bring disaster. The Chinese official and historian, Ssuma
Ch'ien, was not accused of high treason. He only dared to differ with his
emperor's evaluation of a defeated general, and he was only sentenced to
be castrated. Living on, he described in an extraordinary letter the abject
loneliness he suffered during the time of his ordeal.

According to the law of the then ruling Han dynasty, Ssu-ma Ch'ien's
punishment could have been remitted by the payment of a sum of money; and
this could have been done, for he had wealthy and high-ranking friends.
But no one dared to aid him. No one dared to show sympathy for a man who
had angered the emperor. Ssu-ma Ch'ien writes "My friends did not
come to my assistance. Those who were near and intimate with me did not
say a single word in my favor." So he was led into the dark room and
mutilated as if he had been an animal.

{p. 219} c. The Introduction of Oriental Despotism into Russia

The Tatars, who by 1240 had crushingly defeated the Eastern
Slavs, controlled their new subjects so effectively that no independent
Russian power undertook to liberate them.

Nor did any internal Russian force engage in a systematic an open struggle
against the Horde. The isolated military victory at the Don River, which
the Grand Duke of Moscow, Dmitry, won over a Tatar army in 1380, backfired
sadly: the subsequent reprisals discouraged armed resistance for another
hundred years. Even when, in 1480, Ivan III refused allegiance to the enfeebled
Tatars, he avoided battling against them. The Tatars, while still able
to lead an army against the Muscovite host, were equally reluctant. Indecision
on both sides resulted in "an unbelievable spectacle: two armies fleeing
from each other without being pursued by anyone." To quote Karamsin
further: "So ended this last invasion of the Tatars."

So indeed ended Tatar rule over Russia. It had lasted for almost two
hundred and fifty years; and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, which rose to
prominence during this period, did so not as an independent force but as
the instrument of the Khan.

{p. 224} ... it is hard to reject Vernadsky's conclusion that in
the days of the Tatars the old free society of Kievan Russia was "persistently
chipped away without at first affecting the facade," and that
when Ivan III broke with the Horde, "the framework of the new structure
was all but ready and the new order, that of a service-bound society,
became clearly noticeable."

It became clearly noticeable indeed. And a few decades after Ivan's
death, the forces of despotism had gained suflcient strength to destroy
ruthlessly the obsolete facade. The time lag beteen incubation and
maturation reflects the contradictory interests of the Tatars, who wanted
their Muscovite agency to be sufficiently strong to carry

{p. 225} out the will of the Khan but not strong enough to override
it. Without foreseeing the ultimate consequences of their action, they
built an institutional time bomb, which remained under control during their
rule but which started to explode when the "Yoke" collapsed.

Byzantium's influence on Kievan Russia was great, but it was primarily
cultural. Like China's influence on Japan, it did not seriously alter the
conditions of power, class, and property. Ottoman Turkey's influence
on 16th-century Russia stimulated a regime that was already Orientally
despotic, but it did not bring it into being. Tatar rule alone among
the three major Oriental influences affecting Russia was decisive both
in destroying the non-Oriental Kievan society and in laying the foundations
for the despotic state of Muscovite and post-Muscovite Russia.

F. STRUCTURE AND CHANGE IN THE DENSITY

PATTERNS OF THE ORIENTAL WORLD

THUS Greece, Rome, Spain, and Russia all crossed the institutional divide.
In Greece, Rome, and Spain the pendulum swung back and forth. In Tsarist
Russia the reverse movement (away from a despotic state) came close to
bringing the country back into the Western orbit.

{p. 348} The Chinese examination system did in fact make it possible
for a number of qualified commoners to enter the bureaucracy; but its social
effects were much more modest than popular legend would have us believe.
What actually did happen? The question is sufficiently important for an
understanding of mobility in hydraulic society to justify a brief statement
of the function - and the limitation - of the Chinese examination system.

First of all, the Chinese examination system provided the absolutist
governments of China with candidates for office only during a limited and
relatively late period. In Chou times and probably also under the Shang
dynasty the bulk of all officials held positions because their forefathers
had done so.

{p. 349} The much-discussed examination system was established only
in the time of the re-unified empire by the short-lived Sui dynasty (581618).
It was fully developed by the subsequent T'ang dynasty - that is, it came
into being something like seventeen hundred years after the beginning of
the Chou dynasty and eight hundred years after the beginning of the imperial
era. And even during the first half of the thirteen hundred years of its
existence its influence on the social composition of the imperial bureaucracy
was seriously restricted by institutionalized social discrimination, by
hereditary c]aims to office (the yin privilege), and, under the
conquest dynasties, by the politically prominent nobles of the "barbarian"
master nationality.

The Chinese examination system was established not by democratic forces
but one-sidedly by a despotic ruler. The ranking officials certainly influenced
the original plan; and they implemented it, once it was established. Anyone
who was eligible to participate in the examinations could take the initiative
in applying; and this is a significant deviation from the earlier appointment
system. However, even under the examination system the emperor and his
officials ultimately decided whom they would employ, and how they would
employ them. The government determined in advance how many degrees would
be conferred; and even the holders of the most important degree, the chin-shih,
originally were admitted to office only after they had also passed a sort
of civil service test.

The insistence upon a thorough classical education gave the members
of official families - and, of course, also the relatives of the ruling
house - an enormous cultural and social advantage. ...

The Sui statutes that initiated the examination system expressly excluded
"artisans and merchants" from holding office.

{p. 350} The Mongols were deeply suspicious of their Chinese subjects.
They therefore preferred appointment for their Chinese officials to any
other method of selection.

{p. 351} The examinations were open to commoners during the first six
hundred years with serious restrictions, and during the last six hundred
years without such hindrances. But how many commoners did actually rise
to official position in the government of imperial China through this method?

{p. 355} Oriental despots were pleased to use eunuchs in many semipersonal
and semipolitical spheres of court life and in government proper. Often
the eunuchs vere entrusted vith confidential tasks of intelligence. Not
infrequently they were responsible for their sovereign's personal safety
(as heads of his bodyguard); and at times they were placed in command of
important armies or navies, or in charge of the royal treasury.

Such arrangements proved highly satisfactory since, although mutilated
in body and spirit, a eunuch retained his intellectual powers and his ability
to act One of their number, Ts'ai Lun, is credited with having invented
paper; and the most eminent Chinese historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, completed
his great historical work after he had been castrated. Eunuch generals
and admirals seem to have been no less ingenious and daring than those
who had not been emasculated. In the political arena eunuch cunning at
times astounded veterans of Oriental court intrigue. It was here that they
were most

{p. 356} feared, because it was here that they came closest to the nerve
centers of despotic power.

{p. 357} In Western Asia eunuchism flourished under the Achaemenids.
It receded under the Hellenistic monarchs, but it acquired great strength
as the Roman empire became increasingly Orientalized.

In strong contrast to earlier custom the emperors Claudius, Nero, Vitellius,
and Titus included eunuchs in their entourage. Claudius was influenced
by two, Posides and Halotus; and Nero, who "married" the eunuch
Spores, placed the eunuch Pelago in charge of a terror squad. Under Elagabalus
and Gordian eunuchs became a permanent feature of the administration. Diocletian
gave them a prominent place in his new court hierarchy.

Of the eighteen ranks of Byzantine officialdom eunuchs could hold eight,
among them the distinguished Patrillios; and eunuch patricians were rated
above ordinary patricians.

{p. 371} Impressed by the brutal directness with which Marxism-Leninism
discussed the burning conflicts of the day, numberous writers accepted

{p. 372} significant elements of the Soviet scheme of societal development
together with the Marxist-Leninist explanation of capitalism and imperialism.
They did not hesitate to call the traditional institutions of China, India
and the Near East "feudal." They equated post-Mongol Russia and
Western feudalism. And they were convinced that Communis Russia - and recently
also mainland China - had attained a higher socialist or protosocialist
level of development, because they had prevailed over both "feudalism"
and capitalism.

5. THE NEED FOR A REEXAMINATION OF MARX, ENGELS, AND LENIN'S VIEWS ON
THE ASIATIC SYSTEM AND ORIENTAL DESPOTISM

THIS being so, no responsible student of hydraulic society will deny
the importance of reviewing the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin about
the "Asiatic system," Oriental despotism, and societal development.
Manifestly such an examination is necessary from the standpoint of our
subject matter. And it is highly dramatic, because Marx and Engels,
and even the pre-October Lenin, accepted the very Asiatic concept
that the high priests of Marxist-Leninist ideology are rejecting today.

B. MARX, ENCELS, AND LENIN ACCEPT THE ASIATIC CONCEPT

1. MARX FOLLOWS HIS CLASSICAL PREDECESSORS WITH REGARD TO THE INSTITUTIONAL
STRUCTURE AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL POSITION OF THE ORIENT

MARX' concept of Asiatic society vas built largely on the views of such
classical economists as Richard Jones and John Stuart Mill, who in their
turn had developed generaiized ideas held by Adam Smith and James Mill.
Adam Smith noted similarities of hydraulic enterprise in China and "several
other governments of Asia"; and he commented particularly on the
acquisitive power of the rulers in China, ancient Egypt, and India. James
Mill considered the "Asiatic model of government" a general institutional
type and he rejected forced analogies to European feudalism. Richard Jones
outlined

{p. 373} an over-all picture of Asiatic society in 1831, when Marx was
thirteen years old. And John Stuart Mill placed this society in a comparative
frame in 1848, when the authors of the Communist Manifesto, despite an
occasional reference to the "East," betrayed no awareness of
a specific Asiatic society. It was only after Marx resumed his study of
the classical economists in London that he emerged as a vigorous adherent
of the "Asiatic" concept.

From 1853 until his death Marx upheld the Asiatic concept together
with the Asiatic nomenclature of the earlier economists. In addition
to the formula "Oriental despotism," he employed for the whole
institutional order the designation "Oriental society," used
by John Stuart Mill, and also (and with apparent preference) the designation
"Asiatic society," used by Richard Jones. He expressed
his specific concern for the economic aspect of Asiatic society by speaking
of an "Asiatic system" of landownership, a specific "Asiatic
mode of production," and, more concisely, "Asiatic production."

In the 1850's the notion of a specific Asiatic society struck Marx with
the force of a discovery. Temporarily abandoning party politics, he applied
himself intensely to the study of industrial capitalism as a distinct socio-economic
and historical phenomenon. His writings during this period - among others,
the first draft of Das Kaital which he set down in 1857-58 - show
him greatly stimulated by the Asiatic concept. In this first draft as well
as in the final version of his magnum opus, he systematically compared
certain institutional features in the three major types of agrarian society
("Asia," classical antiquity, feudalism) and in modern industrial
society.

WE need not in the present context examine every aspect of Marx' views
on Asiatic society. For our purposes it is enough to underline his Asiatic
interpretation of three countries that today are aain prominent on the
global political scene: India, China, and Russia.

a. India ("Asiatic Society" ...)

IN two articles published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1853
Marx discussed the character of Asiatic society and the possibilities of
its progressive dissolution. In these articles he cited India as a representative
of "old Asiatic society" and the Hindus as having certain
crucial institutions in common with "all Oriental people."
He argued that "climate and territorial conditions" made "artificial
irrigation by canais and waterworks the basis of Oriental agriculture."
And he observed that water control "necessitated in the
Orient, where civilization was too low and the territorial extent too vast
to call into life voluntary association, the interference of the centralizing
power of the government."

Thus it was the need for government-directed water works that according
to Marx gave birth to the Asiatic state. And it was the "dispersed"
condition of the "Oriental people" and their agglomeration in
"self-supporting" villages (combining small agriculture and domestic
handicraft) that permitted its age-long perpetuation. ...

b. China ("... Asiatic Production" and Private Peasant
Landholding)

LIVING in England, as he did for the greater part of his adult life,
Marx was more alert to conditions in India than in China. But from the
1850's on he viewed China, like India, as characterized by "Asiatic"
institutions, and he found "the economic structure of Chinese
society depending upon a combination of small agriculture and domestic
industry (1859). In Volume 3 of Das Kapital, while dis-

{p. 375} cussing the impact of English trade on India and China, he
made this point again. But here he also commented on the absence of a communal
system of land tenure in contemporary China. In India and China "the
broad foundation of the mode of production is shaped by the unity of small
agriculture and domestic industry, to which, in India, is added the pattern
of the village community based on communal property, which, by the
way, was also the original form in China." And remarking on the slow
dissolution of tlle self-sufficient rural economy in contemporary India
(where Britain intervened directly) and the slower dissolution of this
economy in China ("where no direct political power aids it"),
he concluded that "different from English trade, the Russian trade
leaves the economic foundations of Asiatic production untouched."

As early as the 1850's Marx was aware of the fact that the Chinese "Crown"
permitted most of the peasants to "hold their lands, which are of
a very limited extent, in full property." And the just cited passage
from Das Kapital shows clearly that in his opinion the disappearance
of "communal landownership" in China had not, in any significant
way, undermined "the economic foundations of Asiatic production."

c. Russia ("Oriental Despotism" ... Perpetuated)

To the best of my knowledge, Russia was first called a "semi-Asiatic"
country in an article signed by Marx, but written by Engels, which
appeared in the New York Daily Tribune on April 18, 1853. On August
5, 1853, and this time in an article that was genuinely his, Marx contrasted
certain "semi-Eastern" developments involving Tsarist Russia
with "completely Eastern" events in China. From the start
the term "semi-Asiatic," as applied by Marx and Engels to Russia,
referred not to that country's geographic location but to its "traditions
and institutions, character and conditions."

The articles of 1853 did not discuss Russia's institutional peculiarity
in detail. However, in 1881 Marx spoke of Russia's isolated villages and
the strongly centralized form of despotism that had arisen everywhere on
this foundation. Shortly before, Engels had emphasized this point. Indeed
the Marxian interpretation of Russia received its greatest currency through
two statements made by Engels in the 1870's. The first, written in 1875,
reads as follows: "Such a complete isolation of the individual [village]
communities from each other, which in the whole country creates identical,
but the exact opposite of common, interests, is the natural foundation
of Oriental despotism, and from India to Russia this societal form, wher-

{p. 376} ever it prevailed, has always produced despotism and has always
found therein its supplement. Not only the Russian state in general,
but even its specific form, the despotism of the Tsar, far from
being suspended in mid-air, is the necessary and logical product of the
Russian social conditions." The second, contained in his critique
of Duhring, expresses the same idea more briefiy "The ancient communes,
where they continued to exist, have for thousands of years formed the basis
of the most barbarous form of state, Oriental despotism, from India
to Russia."

How long did Russian Oriental despotism endure? Marx insisted that Peter
the Great, far from eliminating it, "generalized" it. And he
expected the emancipation of the serfs to strengthen the absolutist regime,
because it would destroy both the power of the nobles over the serfs and
the self-government of the rural communities.

Marx did not explain how in Russia modern capitalism could develop under
Oriental rule. His failure to do so is one of the most serious deficiencies
in his treatment of marginal and transitional patterns of hydraulic society.
But in terms of his views on the position of capitalism in the Orient,
he was consistent when, in 1881 he considered Russia's modern quasi-Western
capitalism a predatory, middleman-like force.

3. MARX WARNS AGAINST CONFUSING THE STATECONTROLLED AGRARIAN ORDER OF
ASIA WITH SLAVERY OR SERFDOM

RETURNING to the over-all problems of the Asiatic mode of production,
we may say no matter what Marx thought about the exact nature of landownership
in the Orient, he felt certain it was not feudal In 1853, when Engels noted
"that the Orientals did not advance toward landownership, not even
to a feudal one," Marx warned against a too sweeping assumption of
the absence of Oriental landownership. But while he then say some evidence
of private landholding in India, and later also in China, he did not call
their systems of land tenure "feudal."

Oversimplifying a complicated pattern of proprietary relations Marx,
nevertheless, recognized a basic trend when he noted that under the "Asiatic
system" the state was "the real landlord." Later he refined
this early notion. In Das Kaital, Volume 3, he explained that under
the Asiatic system there existed "no private landowner-

{p. 377} ship, but both private and communal possession and usage
of the soil."

This position led Marx to brand the confusion of Asiatic-Egyptian
land tenure with systems based on slavery and serfdom as the worst
mistake that can be made in the analysis of ground rent. And
it immunized him against viewing the Indian zamindars as a variant
of European feudal landlords. He classified the traditional zamindars
as "native tax-gatllerers." And he ridiculed the attempt
to equate the British-made zamindar-landlords with England's landed
gentry: "A curious sort of English landlord was the zemindar, receiving
only one-tenth of the rent, while he had to make over ninetenths of it
to the Government."

4. GENERAL SLAVERY

THUS in the "Orient" the state ruled supreme over both the
labor and property of its subjects. Marx commented on the despot's position
as the actual and apparent coordinator of the population's labor for hydraulic
ancl other communal works; and he considered the individual land-possessing
peasant "au fond the property, the slave" of the head
of the Oriental community. Consistently he spoke of the "general slavery
of the Orient." In contrast to the private slavery of classical antiquity,
a type whose insignificance in the Orient he understood, and in contrast
to the decentralized patterns of feudal control, which he also understood,
Marx viewed the relation between Oriental despotism and the most important
group in the population as one of general (state) slavery.

5. FOR MANY YEARS LENIN ALSO UPHELD THE ASIATIC CONCEPT

IT is difficult to harmonize these statements with the "feudal"
interpretation of the Orient offered today by persons calling themselves

{p. 378} "Marxists." It is even difficult to present such
an interpretation in the name of Leninism. Starting as an orthodox Marxist,
Lenin upheld the idea of a special "Asiatic system" for the better
part of three decades, speaking precisely, from 1894 to 1914.

THE young Lenin joined the Social Democratic movement in 1893. After
a zealous study of Marx' and Engels' writings, he accepted, in 1894, the
"Asiatic mode of production" as one of the four major
economic configurations of society. In his first important book, The
Development of Capitalism in Russia, published in 1899, he began to
designate his country's Asiatic conditions as the Aziatchina, the
"Asiatic system." And he termed Tsarist control over land and
peasants a "fiscal land ownership."

In l900 he referred to the government of traditional China as "Asiatic",
and he rejected as "pharisaic" the equation of European and Asiatic
institutions. In 1902 he noted the crushing character of Asiatic oppression.
In 1905 he denounced "the cursed heritage of bondage of the Aziatchina
and the shameful treatment of man, and he contrasted the retarded development
of "Asiatic capitalism" and the comprehensive and fast development
of European capitalism. In 1906 and 1907 he engaged in a passionate debate
with Plekhanov which underlined his awareness of the Asiatic system and
its implications for a "semi-Asiatic" Russia. In 1911 he reemphasized
the peculiarity of "the Oriental system," the "Asiatic system,"
and the stagnation of the Orient.

In 1912, on the occasion of the Chinese revolution, he recognized the
"Asiatic" quality of traditional China by speaking of "Asiatic
China" and of the "Asiatic" president of China. In l914
in a discussion with Rosa Luxemburg, he defined "Asiatic despotism"
as a "totality of traits" with special "economic, political,
and sociological characteristics," and he ascribed its great stability
to "utterly patriarchal pre-capitalist traits and an insignificant
development of commodity production and class differentiation." In
the fall of that year he wrote an article on Marx for the Encyclopaedia
Granat, in which once more he listed Marx' four major socio-economic
configurations, "the Asiatic, the ancient, the felldal, and the modern
bourgeois modes of production."

Thus from 1894 to 1914 Lenin upheld basic features of Marx' concept
of Asiatic society, the Asiatic mode of production, and Oriental despotism.

{p. 379} ... C. RETREAT FROM TRUTH

... a. Marx "Mystifies" the Character of the Ruling Class

IN his effort to determine class rule Marx, like Adam Smith and
his successors, asked: Who controls the decisive means of production
and the "surplus" created by them? And he found that these
advantages were enoyed in antquity by the "slaveholders,"
in feudal society by the "feudal landlords," in modern industrial
society by "the capitalists," and in Asiatic society by "the
sovereign" or "the state." Thus in the three types
of private-property-based society of his schema Marx established a ruling
class as the main beneficiaries of economic privilege, whereas with regard
to government-dominated Oriental society he was satisfied to mention a
single person, the ruler, or an institutional abstraction, "the state."

This was a strange formulation for a man who ordinarily was eager to
define social classes and who denounced as a mystifying "reification"
the use of such notions as "commodity" and "the state,"
when the underlying human (class) relations were left unexplained. ...

{p. 381} b. Further Retrogressions

... In the writings of the later period he emphasized the technical
side of large-scale water works, where previously he had emphasized
their political setting. He now lumped together control of water "in
Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, etc," where previously he had distinguished
the centralized and despotic governments of the Orient from the

{p. 382} private-enterprise-based "voluntary associations"
of Flanders and Italy. He now mentioned the agrohydraulic function of
a single state, India, where previously he had spoken of this "economic
function" as devolving upon "all Asiatic governments."

A frequently cited passage in Das Kapital, Volume 1, appears
to face the problem of the ruling class in Oriental society. Actually,
however, it blurs the issue by introducing what, from the Marxian point
of view, lS a most peculiar determinant of economic dominance. Attached
to the phrase "The regulation of water in Egypt" is the following
note: "The necessity to calculate the periodic movements of the
Nile created Egyptian astronomy and with it the rule of the priest
caste as leader of agriculture." By making astronomy the basis for
economic leadership, Marx dropped his standard criterion: control over
the means of production. And by stressing the hereditary ("caste")
status of the "leaders" rather than their class, he further confused
the matter.

Moreover, in Volume 3 of Das Kapital he asserted that "in
despotic states, the labor of supreme supervision and the ubiquitous
interference of the government" is demanded in "the execution
of the common tasks evolving from the nature of all [sic!] commonwealths
as well as the specific functions that stem from the antagonisms between
the government and the mass of the people. ...

2. ENGELS

a. Asiatic Society - Yes! (Engels' Basic Attitude)

MARX' retrogressions in the treatment of Asiatic society are little
known. Those of Engels have been widely publicized. Indeed the frequent
references to certain passages in his book, The Origin of the Famtly, Private
Property, and the State, have beclouded the fact that from 1853 until his
death in 1895 Engels upheld, in largest part, the theory of Oriental society.

Engels' early role in clarifying Marx' understanding of the hydraulic
aspect of the Orient and the validity of an "Asiatic" interpretation
of India and Russia c has already been noted. In his critique of Eugen

{p. 383} Duhring (the Anti-Duhring) he went further than Marx
by suggesting that the execution of important "socio-administrative
functions" might lead to the formation of a "ruling class."
And he underscored this point by noting that each of the many "despotic
governments which rose and fell in India and Persia ... knew
full well that it was first of all the total entrepreneur
[Gesamtunternehmerin] of irrigation in the river valleys, without
which no agriculture is possible there." In his critique of Duhring
as well as in his book on the family Engels contrasted the "domestic
slavery" of the Orient and the "work slavery" of antiquity.
And in a passage inserted in Das Kapital, Volume 3, published in
1894, eleven years after Marx' death, he described the peasants of both
India and Russia as being exploited by the mercilessly grinding "tax-screw
of their despotic governments."

b. Asiatic Society - Yes and No! (The Anti-Duhring)

THIS long-range trend was interrupted by two major lapses - one manifested
in the Anti-Duhring, the other in The Origin of the Family, Private
ProlJerty, and the State.

In the Anti-Duhring Engels suggested a dual origin for the state
and for its ruling class. In the first case, these two forces came into
being because of excessive political pover, in the second because of the
growth of private property and private-property-based production. The first
development involved the rise of important socioadministrative functions
and the ability of the governing persons to defy ccntrol to the extent
that the original "servant" of society became its "master."

In this context Engels mentioned "an Oriental despot or satrap,
the Greek tribal prince, the chieftain of a Celtic clan and so on."
His two Western examples bring to mind Marx' ideas on societal dominance
based on political-military function. According to Marx, this

{p. 384} type of dominance soon yielded to dominance based on private
property and private-property-rooted labor (slave labor and serf labor).
Only in the form of Oriental despotism did societal dominance based on
public function spread far and last long.

Although Engels, in the Anti-Duhring, twice noted the enormous
staying power of Oriental despotism ("thousands of years"), in
neither instance did he elaborate this point. But he did list the Oriental
despot first; and later in speaking of the despotic reimes of Persia and
India he did specify their "socio-administrative" function: their
"first duty was the general maintenance of irrigation throughout the
valleys." Engels even noted that dominance based on socioadministrative
function united the "individual ruling persons into a ruling class."

Thus far Engels' presentation, despite its lack of subtlety, was scientifically
legitimate and in agreement with Marx' version of the classical concept
of Oriental society. Equally legitimate, and again in agreement with relevant
ideas of Smith, Mill, and Marx, was his statement on the second origin
of classes and the state: the rise of slave-based production and of private
property in slaves involved the rise of a private-property-based ruling
class; and this development paved the way for an evolution that led via
classical Greece and the Roman Empire to "modern Europe." And
it also involved the rise of a type of state which, because of irreconcilable
contradictions in the new private-property-based economy, was used by the
propertied classes to protect their privileged position.

We need not criticize here the primitive ideas on the relation of wealth
and government that Marx shared with John Locke, Adam Smith, and others.
In the present context we are interested only in the fact that Engels,
in the earlier part of the Anti-Duhring, indicated two different
patterns of societal development ("Side by side with this [the socio-administrative]
origin of class there occurred still another") and that in the last
part of this same book, he abruptly abandoned this notion of a multilinear
development. There he spoke of state and class rule as if they had resulted
exclusively from antagonisms based on conditions of private property. And
he climaxed his slanted presentation by listing only three class societies
based respectively on slavery, serfdom, and wage labor.

c. Asialic Society - No! (The Origin of the Family, Private Prope1ty,
and the State)

IN Engels' much quoted book on the family, which links the basic ideas
of Morgan's Ancient Society and certain Marxian views, Asiatic

{p. 385} society as a major societal order has altogether disappeared.
Here Engels discusses the origin of the state as if he had never heard
of the "socio-administrative" state in general and of Oriental
despotism in particular.

This omission cannot be ascribed to any lack of interest in societies
of the "barbarian" type, for Engels elaborated on the conditions
of "barbarism" in ancient Greece, Rome, and the Celtic and Germanic
Middle Ages. Nor can it be ascribed to the general exclusion of matters
pertaining to the Orient. Although more remiss in this respect than Morgan
(Engels refrained for reasons of "space" from dealing with the
pertinent history of "Asiatic" peoples), he did speak of Asia,
the Asiatics, and Oriental institutions; and as already related, he contrasted
the "domestic slavery" of the Orient with the "work slavery"
of antiquity. But unconcerned with what he had formerly designated as the
"new division of labor" - a division which, subsequent to the
natural division of labor within a community, caused the rise of "functional"
governments and power-based ruling classes - and also unconcerned with
what both he and Marx had written regarding the exploitative quality of
Oriental despotism, Engels now asserted categorically that "the first
great social division of labor initiated the first great division of society
into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited."

The slavery-based society was governed by a state of slave owners, just
as the feudal and capitalist types of society were governed respectively
by a state of feudal nobles and a state of capitalists. In all these societies
economic dominance led to political dominance. And eco-

Thus societal leadership and exploitation were essentially rooted
in private property. The despotic masters of the functional state,
whose ruthless methods of exploitation Engels had once so eloquently described,
remained unnoted. "With slavery, which in civilization developed
most fully, there occurred the first great split of society into an exploiting
and an exploited class. This cleavage lasted throughout the whole period
of civilization. Slavery is the hrst form of exploitation, which is specific
for the ancient world; it was succeeded by serfdom in the Middle Ages and
wage labor in more recent times. These are the three great forms of servitude,
characteristic of the three great epochs of civilization."

The references to "civilization" do not correct the notion
of a unilinear pattern of development created by these sentences. But they
show Engels aware of what he was doing - or better: of what he was hiding.
In Engels' terminology, "civilization" was identical with
the predominance of private property. Through his qualifying clause,
he backhandedly admitted that his statement did not include the "barbarian"
world of Oriental despotism.

THIS is not a pretty picture. The founding fathers of scientific socialism,
who claimed to be basing their political practice on the most advanced
theory of societal development, harmed rather than helped the cause of
truth when they were confronted with the most important historical manifestation
of total power. Why? Did Marx have so little regard for scientific truth
that he bent it easily? This certainly was not the case. The care with
which he documented his own economic views and the elaborate way in which
he presented opposing views demonstrate that he fully recognized the demands
of scholarship.

And Marx himself was explicit on this point. Commenting on the scientific
behavior of Malthus and Ricardo, he condemned all who abandoned scientific
truth and the interest of mankind in general for special interests of any
kind. A scholar, he held, should seek the truth in accordance with the
immanent needs of science, no matter how this affected the fate of any
social class: capitalists, landowners, and workers. Marx praised Ricardo
for taking this attitude, which he called

{p. 387} "not only scientifically honest, but also scientifically
required." For the same reasons, he condemned as "mean"
anyone who subordinated scientific objectivity to extraneous purposes:
"a man who tries to accommodate science to a standpoint which ls not
derived from its own interest, however erroneous, but from outside, alien,
and extraneous interests, [such a man] I call 'mean' (gemein)."

Marx was entirely consistent when he held the refusal to accommodate
science to the interests of any class to be "stoic, objective, scientific."
He was entirely consistent also, when he concluded on a note which from
the standpoint of Leninist-Stalinist partisanship sounds heretically humanitarian:
"As far as this can be done without sin against his science, Ricardo
is always a philanthropist, as he indeed was in practice." And he
was equally consistent when he branded the reverse behavior a "sin
against science."

ii. MARX AND ENGELS SIN AGAINST SCIENCE

IN view of these strongly worded principles, Marx' retrogressions in
analyzing Asiatic society assume special significance. Obviously the
concept of Oriental despotism contained elements that paralyzed his search
for truth. As a member of a group that intended to establish a total
managerial and dictatorial state and was ready to use "despotic
measures" to achieve its socialist ends, Marx could scarcely help
recognizing some disturbing similarities between Oriental despotism
and the state of his program.

The classical economist John Stuart Mill, who, in his Principles,
wrote about the Oriental state, warned in the same book against an all-interfering
state, against the dangers of an intellectually elitist despotism ("the
government of sheep by their shepherd, without any thing like so strong
an interest as the shepherd has in the thriving of his flock"), against
"political slavery," and a "dominant bureaucracy."
Did these and other academic exhortations induce Marx in the '50's to
hide the bureaucratic aspect of Oriental despotism? This we do not
know. But we do know that in the '60's and '70's anarchist writers leveled
much less academic criticisms at the Marxian principles of state socialism.

When Marx was writing the final version of Das Kapital, Volume
1, he was in open conflict with the Proudonists. And from the late '60's
on, both he and Engels were manifestly disturbed by the claim of the Bakunists
that state socialism would inevitably involve the despotic rule of a privileged
minority over the rest of the population, the

{p. 388} workers included. In 1873 Bakunin continued the attack in
his book Statism and Anarchism, which insisted tha the Marx-envisaged
socialist state "begets despotism on the one hand and slavery on
the other." The Marxist theory "is a falsehood, behind which
lurks the despotism of a governing minority, a falsehood which is all the
more dangerous in that it appears as the ostensible expression of the people's
will."

The political solutions offered by the anarchists were without doubt
Utopian. But their criticism cut deep, as can be inferred from Marx' interpretation
of the Paris Commune (which the Anarchists held to be a clownish reversal
of his earlier position), and from the secrecy with which, in 1875,
Marx and Engels shrouded their ideas on state socialism and the dictatorship
of the proletariat. In his personal copy of Statism and Anarchism
Marx made extensive notes, but he never answered Bakunin's acid arguments
in public.

Engels confused the issue of Oriental despotism most seriously in the
years following the appearance of Bakunin's book. His insertion in Das
Kapital, Volume 3, dealing with the exploitative despotic regimes of
Russia and India was made in the '90's - when, according to Engels' own
statement, he was no longer bothered by the anarchists.

iii. FROM PROGRESSIVE TO REACTIONARY UTOPIANISM

THE authors of the Communist Manifesto accused the "Utopian"
socialists of giving a "fantastic description of the society of
the future." But Marx and Engels did exactly this when
they pictured their socialist state. The fathers of "scientific socialism"
who realistically, if imperfectly, analyzed the problems of capitalist
economy, failed to make any comparable effort to analyze the problems
of the dictatorial and functional state, a socialist variant of
which they were seeking to establish. Substituting "fanatical
superstitions" for scientific inquiry, they made the very mistake
for which they had so harshly criticized the early Utopians.

And they suffered the same fate. The Utopian views, which in Marx' and
Engels' opinion originally had a progressive ("revolutionary")
quality, lost "all practical value and all theoretical justification,"
when new progressive societal forces emerged. Their significance bore "an
inverse relation to historical development." Eventually they became
outright "reactionary."

{p. 389} Under different circumstances and in a much more devastating
way, the Utopian state socialists also closed the circle. Their economic
and functional approach to history stimulated the social sciences of the
19th and early 20th centuries. And their social criticism stimulated the
struggle against the monstrous conditions that characterized the earlier
phases of the modern industrial system. But the original vision lost its
progressive quality as realization neared. On the theoretical plane its
reactionary potential was manifested early in Marx' and Engels' retrogressive
attitude toward the Asiatic variant of managerial and bureaucratic despotism.
On the practical plane this reactionary potential was manifested on a colossal
scale when, nine months after the fall of the semimanagerial apparatus
state of Tsarism, the Bolshevik revolution paved the way for the rise
of the total managerial apparatus state of the USSR.

i. CONSISTENT DISREGARD OF THE MANAGERIAL ASPECT OF ORIENTAL DESPOTISM

THE factors which increasingly distorted Marx' and Engels' views of
Oriental despotism increasingly produced retrogressive results in the case
of Lenin.

During the first twenty years of his political career Lenin had generally
accepted Marx' version of the classical concept of Asiatic society, but
from the start his attitude was peculiarly selective. He never mentioned
the managerial functions of Oriental despotism, although he certainly
knew Engels' pertinent statements in the AntiDuhring (from which
he frequently quoted) and although these functions were emphasized in the
correspondence between Marx and Engels (with which he was familiar). Nor
was his disinclination to explore the functional aspect of Asiatic despotism
weakened by the knowledge that this aspect was stressed by Kautsky,
whose "orthodox" Marxism he admired, and by Plekhanov, whom he
considered the leading authority on Marxist philosophy even after they
broke politically.

Lenin thus closed his eyes not only to crucial realities in traditional
Asia but also to essential features of the Tsarist regime, vhose managerial
activities he could observe at close range. In his Development of Capitalism
in Russia (1899), he accomplished the extraor-

{p. 390} dinary feat of describing the rise of a private-property-based
industry in his native land without indicating the dimension of the
statemanaged enterprises which for almost two hundred years had dominated
Russia's large-scale industry and which, with significant modificatlons,
were still extremely important

By neglecting the managerial role of Tsarist despotism, Lenin seriously
falsified the picture of Russia's economic order. By underplaying its
exploitative role, he falsified it still more. In 1894 Engels noted the
crushing effect of taxation on the Russian peasants. And a few years later,
Nicolai-on and Milyukov showed that the government, through direct - and
indirect - taxes, was depriving the Russian peasants of about 50 per cent
of their income. Although he dealt with Nicolai-on's work at length, Lenin
said nothing about the indirect taxes, which were numerous and heavy, and
this procedure led him to the problematic conclusion that among the peasant
group on which he had detailed data the taxes absorbed only about 15 per
cent or "one seventh of the gross expenditure."

ii. A CONFUSED PRESENTATION OF RUSSIA's RULING CLASS

LENIN'S treatment of the ruling class under Oriental despotism was equally
unsatisfactory. Marx' retrogressions in this respect, although enormously
important for the interpretation of managerial despotism in general, did
not seriously affect his analysis of modern Western society, which after
all was his major concern. On the other hand, Lenin's discussion of the
ruling class of Oriental despotism was anything but academic. It pertained
to the very society which he was endeavoring to revolutionize.

If, as Lenin assumed, Tsarism was a variant of Oriental despotism and
if under Oriental despotism landlordism originated from a nonfeudal form
of state dependency, then he could be expected to hold that Tsarist
society was controlled not by feudal or postfeudal landowners but by bureaucrats;
and if this was his opinion, he could be expected to say so. If it was
not, he could be expected to give substantial reasons for rejecting this
view.

Actually he did neither. Instead he described Russia's ruling class
now in one way, now in another. At times he spoke of a "dictatorship
of the bureaucracy," and he saw its officials towerin "over
the voiceless people like a dark forest." At times he spoke of
the Tsarist government as having "bourgeois" tendencies and being
subservient to the "big capitalists and nobles." Most frequently
he described it as being dominated by noble landowners.

{p. 391} OBSERVING these inconsistencies, we may well wonder how a revolutionary
leader whose ideas on the ruling class were so blurred could seize power.
But we have only to recall Hitler's perverted interpretation of German
conditions and his smashing victories over his internal enemies to realize
that enormous political successes can be won on the basis of ideas that
are at best semirational.

Lenin's stress on objective and absolute truth did not prevent him from
demanding that socialist writers and artists follow the principle of partisanship,
partinost. Throughout his career he himself did so even when it
meant the abrogation of the most elementary rules of scientific propriety.

Certainly Lenin's inconsistency in defining Russia's ruling class had
no scientific justification. And his tricky verbal acrobatics in and after
the Stockholm debate on Russia's Asiatic Restoration foreshadow his later
readiness to blackout the truth completely.

c. The Threat of the Asiatic Restoation (1906-07)

PREPARING for the Stockholm Congress of the Russian Social Democratic
party in 1906, Plekhanov, speaking for the Mensheviks, challenged Lenin's
plan for the nationalization of the land. Both the debate at the Congress
itself and Lenin's subsequent utterances show him seriously upset by
Plekhanov's argument, which, recalling Russia's Asiatic heritage, warned
of the possibility of an Asiatic restoration.

The reason for Plekhanov's apprehensions can be quickly told. Encouraged
by the experiences of 1905, Lenin believed that the Social Democratic party
would be able to seize power if it could rally behind it Russia's small
working class and the numerically strong peasantry. To win the
support of the latter, he suggested that the nationalization of
the land be made part of the revolutionary program. Plekhanov branded
the idea of a socialist seizure of power as premature and the plan to nationalize
the land as potentially reactionaly. Such a policy, instead of discontinuing
the attachment of the land and its tillers to the state, would leave
"untouchedthis survival of an old semi-Asiatic order"
and thus facilitate its restoration.

This vas the dreaded historical perspective that Lenin alternately designated
as "the restoration of the Asiatic mode of production," "the
restoration of our old 'semi-Asiatic' order," ...

{p. 400} But the initiated will recall Marx' and Engels' view that
self-sufficient, dispersed, and isolated rural communities form the solid
and natural foundation of Oriental despotism. And they will recall
Lenin's statement in 1914 that the "insignificant development of commodity
production" was the economic cause of the great stability of Asiatic
despotism.

A few paragraphs later, and as if to dispel all doubt as to what he
was driving at, Lenin went still further in characterizig the new Soviet
bureaucracy. To his own question, "What are the economic roots of
bureaucracy?" he answered, "There are two main roots on the one
hand, the developed bourgeoisie needs a bureaucratic apparatus, primarily
a military apparatus, and then a judicial apparatus. This we have not got.
Our bureaucracy has a different economic root ... it is the fragmented
and dispersed character of the small producer, his poverty, the lack of
culture, the absence of roads, illiteracy, the absence of exchange between
agriculture and industry, the absence of connection and interaction betuleen
them."

True, Lenin did not put a label on the phenomenon he was describing.
But the details he cited all elaborated the dispersion and isolation of
the villages over which the new regime ruled In Aesopian language he was
obviously expressing his fear that an Asiatic restoration was taking place
and that a new type of Oriental despotism was in the making.

No wonder then that at the end of his political career Lenin several
times called Russia's institutional heritage "bureaucratic" and
"Asiatic." He noted that Russian society had "not yet emerged"
from its "semi-Asiatic" lack of culture. He juxtaposed the "Asiatic"
way in which the Russian peasant traded to the "European" way.
And he criticized the Soviet regime for being unable to "go along
without the particularly crude types of pre-bourgeois culture, i.e. bureaucratic
or bondage culture". Bondage culture - not feudal culture And shortly
before he suffered the stroke that altogether removed him from the political
arena, he went so far as to call the Soviet state apparatus "to a
large extent the survival of the old one It is only slightly repainted
on the surface."

{p. 403} ... Trotsky had never invoked the Asiatic concept in his fight
against Stalin. {footnote u} ...

u. In the introductory chapters of his books on the Russian revolutions
of 1905 and 1917, Trotsky succinctly explained the managerial and
exploitative quality of the Tsarist regime which, in his opinion, approached
"Asiatic despotism" (Trotsky, 1923: {continued on p. 404}

{p. 404} {footnote u continued} 18ff.; ibid., 1931: 18 ff.) But
in the twenties and thirties he did not discuss Chinese society in "Asiatic"
terms, nor did he use the criteria of Oriental despotism when he criticized
Stalin's bureaucratic despotism. In 1938 Trotsky wrote a survey of what
he held to be Marx' ideas. In his discussion of the types of social relations
he mentioned only three - slavery, feudalism, and capitalism (Trotsky,
1939: 8) - just as Stalin did in the same year and Lenin had done in 19l9.

{p. 443} ... the Chinese Communists moved quickly to establish a new
semimanagerial order, which differs both in structure and developmental
intent from the semimanagerial order of agrarian despotism. The rapid integration
of the Chinese peasants into primitive collectives, called Producers' Cooperatives,
indicates that Communist China is moving quickly from a semimanagerial
to a total managerial order.

on your pages on Wittfogel you claim he was a "Jewish Communist".
He was indeed a Communist (until the 1930s) but not a Jew, unlike
most of his friends and colleagues. His father was a Protestant preacher.
His mother wasn't Jewish either.